A cultivated detachment: Alienation in African-American women's literature after the civil rights movement

My work participates in the on-going black feminist project of making visible how the intersection of race, class, and gender shape the construction of the black female subject. This project is a study of how the legislative responses to black and feminist mass movements of the late sixties and early seventies have allowed some African American women a mobility of class and consciousness that calls into question traditional assumptions concerning what it means to be an African American woman. I focus on four texts---Alice Walker's Meridian (1976), Toni Morrison's Tar Baby , Andrea Lee's Sarah Phillips (1984), and Lorene Cary's Black Ice (1991)---each of whose central character grapples with the ostensible conflict between the pursuit of individual opportunities for improved social standing and the dictates of racial uplift ideology. They do so against a backdrop of toleration and opposition to their presence in integrated social and educational locales. Unable to withstand the ensuing tension from this dilemma, the protagonists resort to detachment---psychologically disengaging themselves from their environments. I look at the representation of this experience.;By exploring this dilemma, my dissertation---which combines traditional literary analysis with black feminist theory---contributes to the critical literature on these texts and to the body of humanistic and social science research on African Americans' quest for independence and self-definition. My critical context includes literary theory, history, culture, and politics. Furthermore, my research advances discussions about affirmative action, assimilation, and multicultural education.