This paper examines Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, in the backdrop of the contemporary scholarship of African American literature. The focus of the analysis is on the portrayal and celebration of motherhood which transcends the biological form and reaches the spiritual one. The paper highlights the irritatingly negative attitude of the African-American mothers, which stems from the deep disappointment and hurts in the life of these women. However, there are mothers who derive their inspiration from African values and cultural practices and offer a resistance against the maternal stereotype imposed by the white literature.

Portrayal of motherhood has always been one of the most dominant preoccupations of all the black women writers, as it finds its vivid and graphic expression in their works. These writers build upon the black women’s experience of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood in terms of both maternal identity and maternal role. Their perception of motherhood is radically different from that of dominant culture where black motherhood has been used as a distinctly complex ideology to control black women. In most of the white literature, black women have been assigned certain stereotypes, such as breeder, concubine, mammy, and mule, and projected as more eager for motherhood than their white counterparts. Furthermore, the white literature also endorses their capability as mothers as compared to the white women:

• . . . all black women became superhuman mothers, not only for their own people, but for white people as well. More than white women, it is assured, black women look to motherhood as their chief justification in life; and more than white women, they are physically and emotionally capable of handling the responsibilities with it. (Wade- Gayles 1984, 59)

American Literature Journal, Amor in Pound, Classical European Literature, Homosexuality, Diastasis, Olga-Circe-Artemis, Heterosexual Love, Homosexual Love.