Black Women's Trauma, Awaking And Hope

As the first African American Nobel Prize winner in literature, Toni Morrison has become a household name in American literary arena and exerted vibrating influence upon the world literature. Since Toni Morrison published the first novel, she has been focusing on black women's living conditions and internal states. Meanwhile, she constantly and diligently sought the healing solutions to black women's sufferings. The paper analyzes the black women's plight, awakening and emancipation from the perspective of womanism.This thesis consists of five Parts: Introduction, three Chapters and Conclusion. Part one gives a brief introduction to Toni Morrison's literary career, the differences and connections of feminism and womanism and Toni Morrison's womanist ideas. Chapter one analyzes black women's plight under class, racial, gender oppression, and points out that it is the multiple oppressions that eventually lead to the incident of infanticide. Chapter two probes the awakening of black women's self-consciousness through the behavior of Baby Suggs, Sethe and Denver. Chapter three discusses that the hope of the black women is to establish a new womanist society. In order to realize this goal, the first step is to reconstruct the Black Culture, the second step is to fight against the oppression and search for their self-identities, the third step is to try to get support from the black community and some enlightened white people. Only in this way, a harmonious womanist society can be built; the black people can obtain their true emancipation spiritually.Thus, a conclusion can be made that only by confronting, revisiting, and reshaping the past, can the black people claim their lost identities, and by establishing equal and harmonious relationship with men and getting support from all possible aspects, can black women build a harmonious womanist society and obtain their true emancipation and development.