A Study Of Hybridity In Alice Walker's Writing

As one of the foremost contemporary writers in American literature,Alice Walker(1944-)recognizes her European American,African American,and American Indian ancestries in her interviews and autobiographical essays,and highlights her American Black-Indian identity in much of her published works,especially in her fiction.Walker argues that the acceptance of the mixed ancestries,including the acceptance by European Americans of the fact that many of them are not "white" but genetically mixed with "colored" people,is a necessary precursor to freedom and development.She insists that to identify with only one of his/her racial or cultural identities may lead to "psychic illness" rather than the integration and wholeness of self in embracing all of his/her identities.Walker's fiction not only demonstrates the literary and cultural elements from her African American and American Indian heritage,but also links together the collective struggle for freedom undertaken historically by African American and American Indian peoples.Walker's fiction witnesses the hybridity of the narrative patterns,religious beliefs,and the portrayal of the "hybridized" characters,representing her unique textual paradigms.Although Walker has been steadily attracting critical attention,generating much interest among scholars both in America and abroad,her American Black-Indian identity claimed frequently is rarely discussed.As the offspring of the African Americans and American Indians,Walker is constantly sensitive to her marginal status in the dominant whites' culture.As the contemporary culture and literature become more diversified and the boundary between the center and the margin is being dissolved,Walker has been striving to explore and construct her literary and cultural American Black-Indian identity.Based on Homi Bhabha's theory of hybridity,the dissertation aims to explore how Walker,by combining the elements of traditional African American and American Indian cultures as well as the modern western writing techniques and ideas,illustrates the hybridity embodied in the text,the narrative,the cultural context of religious beliefs,and the characterization of the multicultural and multiracial protagonists,constructing her own American Black-Indian literary paradigms,demonstrating her creative strategies and national consciousness in developing her hybrid identity under the oppressions of white culture,and challenging the identity assigned to her by the dominant society.The analysis of the construction of the cultural identity in Walker's works from the perspective of hybridity may help to further understand Walker's literary characteristics.Besides,it tentatively sorts out the collective writing techniques and literary characteristics of those writers with similar hybrid identities as Walker does.This dissertation consists of three chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion.Chapter One analyzes the methods Walker employs to establish her unique American Black-Indian textual narrative patterns by means of the hybrid narrative strategies.Walker's inheritance of her diverse cultural traditions can be perceived through her narrative patterns both in languages and texts,foregrounding the narrative hybridity.With African Americans'local dialects and whites' Standard English combined as a narrative tool,Walker "appropriates" the themes or forms of the western mainstream literature.She also consciously injects her own ethnic cultural elements into it,such as the structural patterns of blues and the reversing strategy of "the signifying monkey",which rewrites the established and authoritative modes of the mainstream literature.Simultaneously,Walker's fiction also reflects the hybridization between African American literature and culture and American Indian literature and culture,transforming the African American folk culture and American Indian philosophy into the narrative style of the texts and making the African American text and the American Indian text " have a dialogue" within Walker's text,which creates a special textual representation for Walker 's hybrid identity.This narrative pattern conforms to the strategy of "mimicry" in Homi Bhabha's theory of hybridity,blurs the borders of the Black/White texts,and hybridizes the African American literature with American Indian literature in the margin,challenging the authoritative forms of the western mainstream literature and surpassing the traditional narrative patterns of African American literature as well.Chapter Two focuses on the fusion of and conflict between the dominant Christian belief and the traditional religious beliefs of African Americans and American Indians.On the one hand,Walker creates a cultural context with multiple religions juxtaposed with each other,in which the characters undertake their daily lives,various performances and spiritual development,indicating their "ambivalent"attitudes toward Christian belief in this complex environment.Some characters either indulge themselves in self alienation owing to their internalization of the western Christian ideas or try to protect themselves through Christian belief,while others strive to heal their traumas physically and spiritually by restoring to their traditional beliefs.On the other hand,Walker endows her fiction proper with a religious atmosphere,that is,Walker frames her fiction with the patterns of the ethnic religious chants or that of the religious practice,demonstrating the characters' survival wisdom under the influences of the mainstream Christian belief,the African American and American Indian traditional beliefs.In this way,Walker constructs a cultural "third space" successfully,providing an opportunity to voice for the marginalized cultural beliefs of African Americans and American Indians.By analyzing the characters' racial and cultural identities,Chapter Three intends to manifest the great significance of the hybrid identity in their self affirmation and self realization.Walker has portrayed several "hybridized" characters in terms of race and culture.Living in a multi-cultural space,some of them are confused about their vague identities,struggling in the "crack" of different cultures or losing themselves in forgetting their "past".Such accesses as seeking the roots,re-remembering the past,and speaking for the national culture are offered by Walker to facilitate these figures'self affirmation,in which,the "Indianess" in the hybrid identity and the spiritual power of the art play a considerable role in self realization and self identification.Walker manages to establish an " in-between" literary paradigm among African America literature,American Indian literature,and the mainstream literature through her writing of hybridity,where Walker insinuates the one-sidedness of the mainstream society in interpreting the cultures,histories,and identities of the African Americans and American Indians.Walker's works and characters employ their advantages of hybridity to resist the western mainstream ideology having imprisoned and repressed the minority people's subjectivity,opening up a relatively safe site to preserve the wholeness of self.In the process of creating this site,Walker highlights the significance of hybridity in the modern multi-cultural American society and constructs her own hybrid American Black-Indian identity,rejecting her identity categorized simply by the western racism.