The New Thought To Construct Outlets For African Americans

Under the influence of multi-cultural trend in the first half of the 20th century, the black woman literature gradually has risen and moved towards prosperity from the 70s, finally becoming an important branch of American literature. A large number of African American woman writers have been in a sudden emergence. They have revealed black cultural traditions in different ways, irritating the awareness of black females'subjectivity and promoting the liberation of African American women, and therefore they became to be a new acquisition in American literature and world literature. At that time, the wave of African American movement aroused repeatedly, and the voice calling for equality between the white and the black, the man and woman was bubbling and bursting. The problems of race and gender became the two of several major social problems in United States. Alice Walker is one of the most influential figures in the American literature. Dual identities of black and female make her profoundly understand the difficulty of blacks'living, especially the black females'. On the one hand, thrown in both the African traditional culture and the American mainstream culture, the African Americans go through the magnificent collision of these two cultures, then suffering the racial prejudice from the white mainstream culture. On the other hand, the continuance of the black patriarchy makes the living of black females sink into misery. Therefore, the blacks and the black females in America become the Others in the mainstream cultures of the whites and the men. Exploring and constructing the identities of the blacks and black female has become the primary task for the African American literature, especial the African American woman literature, and there come to hot debates about the identity's construction. Walker's The Color Purple deeply illustrates the two problems in the society. As to these problems, different theorists have given different advices, and especially Homi Bhabha's theory is of great value for finding the outlets for African Americans. Thus, the study of Walker's novel based on Homi Bhabha's postcolonial theory is an innovative perspective and has a positive social meaning. What are the connection points of the novel and the theory and what are the effects of reading the novel based on the theory to find the outlets for the Others? These two main problems are the key concerns in the thesis. The Color Purple speaks for Walker's efforts at creative and nuanced explorations on the issues of identity of the black and the black women. From the perspective of the postcolonialism, the novel seems to aim at creating a space, in which the stereotypes about the African Americans are resisted and broken and their own identities can be constructed, so that the whites and blacks, females and males can live harmoniously in the whole society. Therefore, the thesis studies Walker's exploring the outlets for the black and black females in America based on Homi Bhabha's postcolonialism, which brings about the theoretical guidance in linking the gaps formed in different races and the two genders in the American society.