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Constructs of Blackness in Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and
the Literary Imagination
- - R M V Raghavendra Rao
Toni Morrison has consciously inherited the legacy of
the search for new perceptions of the African-American cosmology. This includes
the reclamation of the African-American individual, community and freedom, and
the search for a new literary discourse corresponding with the challenge of
the new vision, from the committed discourses of the African-American leaders,
philosophers, writers and audio-visual artists such as the Blues, right from
the turn of the century to the present. Having been engaged in the construction
of a multidimensional text since her The Bluest Eye and Beloved, Morrison, in
her Playing in the Dark (1992), devotes her theoretical concerns to an Afrocentric
perspective emerging from her historical and literary responses to the US and
its White-American classics. Morrison's enquiry opens an integrated social perspective
towards Africanism. To her, "Africanism is inextricable from the definition
of Americanness", and criticism, to her, cannot remain "too polite
or too fearful to notice a disruptive darkness before its eyes". This paper
is a detailed attempt to focus on Morrison's social and literary concerns in
upholding integrity and centrality of Africanness in the US and her search for
new perceptions of the African-American cosmology.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Alice Childress' Wine in the Wilderness: A Harbinger of
the Golden Era of the 1970s African-American Feminist Epistemology
- - Melissa Helen
The rise and success of African-American women is phenomenal. From a Mammy, a Jezebel, a Welfare Mother, a
Domestic, to becoming teachers and nurses, they have come a long way to be regarded as successful African-American
women in different walks of life. They empowered themselves to break the citadels of male power and the bastions of
male privileges. Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress and Ntozake Shange as playwrights; Oprah Winphrey, Naomi
Campbell, Halle Berry and Whoopi Goldberg in media, TV, etc.; Mae Jemison as an astronaut; Coleman Bessie with an
international pilot's license; Sarah E Goodie as a patent holder; and the most powerful woman of our age, Condoleezza Rice, are just
a few examples. The politics that they had to grapple with during the process of their self-empowerment is recorded
and represented by many writers. Here, the focus is
on Wine in the Wilderness (1969), a play written by Alice Childress,
who follows Hansberry and is a precursor of Shange. The Black Theater Movement of the 1960s in the US enabled the
African-American artists to re-vision and re-construct their community's history, culture, and art, and this resulted in the
development of a Black aesthetics that is distinct from western parameters. As a result, the 1970s saw the golden age of
African-American women's worksideology, and all genres of literaturemore pertinently, the theater. A fundamental step in
the process of women's self-determination is in releasing their rage and anger, which is the result of racism and sexism.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Historicizing, Theorizing, and Contextualizing Feminism
- - Anupama Chowdhury
Feminism is a heterogeneous, multifaceted term. Intricately
linked with social, cultural, political and even historical aspects, this challenging
theory is both problematic and elusive. Together with post-colonialism and post-modernism,
feminism opens up new frontiers of knowledge in the field of literary theory
and criticism. The emergence of several diversified forms of feminism`Liberal'
feminism, `Marxist' and `Socialist' feminisms, `Radical' feminism, `Liberal'
feminism, `French' feminism, `Black' feminism and `Womanism', `Multiracial'
feminism, `Individualist' feminism, `Post-structural' and `Post-modern' feminism,
`Ecofeminism', etc.encompasses so many aspects, that even the use of the term
in a plural sense fails to do justice. Its use as a plural is rather a conceptual
approachstill ambivalent and rather slippery. Divided into two sections, this
paper, in the initial section, attempts to theorize this concept in different
perspectives. It also attempts to trace the history of its flowering into maturity
from the moment of its inception. The second section tries to contextualize
feminism in the Indian society and critical thought.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
`Writing Women': A Canadian Perspective
- - Suman Ray Malakar
Going by the dictionary meaning of the word `mold', as a `particular style showing the characteristics ', breaking
the mold denotes an `original way' that promises to change people's expectations from a situation. Accommodating
newer perspectives, attitudes, approaches and techniques of representation, along with a calculated negation of the
accepted ones, is the focus of this paper. Through four specific short stories that have been carefully selected from the
Canadian mosaic, and critically analyzed, the aim is to show how conscious attempts have been made by the authors to
accomplish the above. While Susan Swan topples the societal power structure by giving women ultimate prerogatives over the
other gender, Jane Rule begins with the assumption that lesbianism is the better alternative to `compulsory
heterosexuality', demanding equality in any relationship. Moreover, her experimentation with the narrative technique provides
multiple voices to her characters. Aritha van Herk questions her `paltry (English) language' which, devoid of any native
element, becomes insufficient in the extreme Arctic conditions. The stereotype of the `silent black woman' is contested
by Nourbese Philip, the final author under consideration, where the daughter's quest to find a meaning and purpose behind
a custom is steadily pursued, though not without her mother's vehement protests. It is either knowledge, or power, or
both, that governs every representation, and this paper, through these very instances, attempts to put forth this argument.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: Rehashing Orientalist Stereotypes
- - Asha S
Popular narratives produced from the west, particularly since 9/11, perpetuate negative stereotypes about Middle
Eastern Muslim women. Native writers settled in the west also dish out heart-rending tales of women's oppression in
fundamentalist Islamic societies, targeting a western audience long fed on tales of Islam's intolerance towards women. These
`New Orientalist' narratives, portraying Muslim women as hapless victims of Islamic fundamentalism, only serve to reinforce
the stereotypes entrenched in popular western imagination. With Azar Nafisi's
Reading Lolita in Tehran as a case in
point, this paper seeks to examine how new orientalist narratives misrepresent the position of women in Islamic societies.
The paper concludes that bestsellers, produced by native as well as western writers and touted as authentic
representations of life in the Middle East, mostly draw a black and white distinction between western and Middle Eastern societies,
depict violence and discrimination against women as characteristic of Islamic culture, and under-represent indigenous
struggles for women's rights, thereby covertly suggesting that western mediation is inevitable in order to improve the condition
of women in Middle Eastern societies.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
"Nomad Novelist" J M G Le Clézio: The Integrative Voice
- - S S Prabhakar Rao
The announcement of the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 for the nominally French novelist Le Clézio, is
a recognition of the literary excellence outside the reigning European/American monopoly. Though born in France,
Le Clézio is truly a "citizen of the world", as he experienced diverse cultures and lived among the natives of America,
Africa, and of those in the Indian Ocean. His literary work, commencing with
Le Procès-verbal (1963), is a product of
his transcultural experience and has the strength of an inclusive cultural response. His literary concerns range from
the depiction of clash of cultures of North Africa and Europe, to that between city and country. He is keenly aware of
the onslaught of cultural globalization, and yet he emerges as a cosmopolitan author, endowed with an eloquent voice
of integration. The present paper on the Nobel Laureate's contribution is a modest attempt at an assessment of his stature
as a global cultural integrationist.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss: Travails of Immigration
- - Sonali Das
Diaspora is of two kinds: old and new. The old diaspora belonged
to the colonial era, when the poor and the underprivileged were forced to leave
the country to work elsewhere as indentured laborers. The new diaspora refers
to the upper class educated people who left the country on their own in 1970s
and after, to earn name and fame abroad. Kiran Desai, being an immigrant herself,
belongs to the second category (i.e., the new diaspora). Living in the US she
looks back at her past in India and tries to recreate the Indian situation in
the global context. The novel The Inheritance of Loss (the Booker Prize winner
for 2006) deals with the struggle of the unknown people of low economic background
in troubled times. It is set in the 1980s in Kalimpong, a Himalayan town in
the north-east of India. The story moves between New York and London, recording
racism, the plight of the Asian illegal immigrants in the west to the insurgency
spearheaded by the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) in Eastern India.
The novel skilfully explores the events of contemporary history through the
lives of the characters of Jemubhai Patel, Sai and Biju, making it an absorbing
read.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Anguish of Diasporic Experience in Contemporary Parsi Fiction
- - J G Duresh
Parsis undertook a hazardous journey and settled in India following the Arab Invasion of Iran, their native land, in the
7th century AD. Due to their integrity and honesty, they could, very quickly, flourish in the pluralistic Indian society. In
the British Raj, they were indeed the most favored social group. However, in post-colonial India, they have developed
a feeling of insecurity and rootlessness and have failed to orientate with the Indian mainstream. The Parsis, who left
India and settled in the west, have also fostered feelings of otherness and alienness. This perplexity of the Parsis is
vividly portrayed in the contemporary Parsi fictional narratives. This paper attempts to study the select fictional narratives
of three popular Parsi novelistsRohinton Mistry, Boman Desai and Farrukh Dhondy, from the perspective of
diasporic consciousness.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Critical Response to the Marginalized: Dalit Poetry in Telugu
- - V V B Rama Rao
Critical response to Dalit poetry is a challenge as well as
a source of pleasure to a literary critic. Basically, these are voices of protest
against oppression, humiliation, senseless, unjust, and cruel discrimination.
Social disparities are threatening the cohesiveness of the society. Discontent
leads to disharmony and even belligerency. This article is an attempt to present
a bird's eye view and a sampling of some of the powerful Dalit poets. Starting
with some selected poems from Chikkanautunna Paata, edited by G Lakshmi Narasayya
and Tripuraneni Srinivas and published by Kavitvam Prachuranalu in 1995, and
moving on to Voices on the Wing, edited, compiled and translated by this author
in 2000, and to More Voices on the Wing, 2001, this critique considers various
aspects of some of the many voices. These two volumes consolidate, as it were,
the corpus of poetrythe former of the marginalized, and the latter Telugu inclusive
of extensive free verse. To round up this brief survey, some poems of the recent
publications are also included. Thanks to democratization, what first manifested
is the flowering of expression in the so-far-marginalized depressed classes.
The voices are anguished, angry, convulsively vituperative, almost always driving
home the point a plea and demand for dignified equality. The most significant
feature in this sub-genre of Telugu discourse is the emergence of a corpus of
powerful poetry. The many voices drew public attention with its variedly worded,
variedly intoned, and differently targeted pictures of the heinous discrimination
and mindless cruelty. In different tones, likeable or pungent, vicious or highly
provocative, it is composed with a pointed purposeassertion and claim to equality,
human dignity and social justice.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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