An Exotic Flower In Alien Land

Toni Morrison was awarded Nobel Prize for her fifth novel Beloved in 1993, the first African American woman writer to win this distinction. Beloved discloses the tragic adversity of American black people after the abolishment of the slavery and portrays a progress of a baby ghost's vengeance. Besides this, her productive works not only prove the idea that the Afro-American is non-neglectable in American literature, but also make efforts to preserve and develop African culture. She selected subject materials from African American history and life. And she made reflections and expression on history, living conditions and spiritual world of Afro-Americans.This thesis explores this classical novel Beloved by using of key concepts of Post-Colonialism and focuses on the multicultural location in African American culture. For this special collective, slavery has left historical scars in their mind. And this memory and experience influence their way to search for their self-identities because they are the aggregation of African and American. The author also adopts Du Bois' theory of double consciousness to prove the possibility and necessity to identify their identities. With this precondition, the author tries to draw a conclusion that African American culture is transplanted and reborn in an alien land.Grounded in the postcolonial context, this dissertation is to show the hybridity and duality of culture in Beloved. African American culture is transplanted with African cultural heritages such as oral tradition, blues and rituals. As the time goes, it assimilates Euro-American culture, especially Christianity. These cultural elements from different nations are not negotiated mechanically. Beloved grafts an African religious world view to a Christian one whose biblical cadences and echoes are present in an altered meaning. Cultural renewal is the result of the transplantation and rebirth of the Afro-American culture. When African traditional culture is transplanted in an alien land, America, it adapts to the new cultural environment. The assimilation and adaptation of cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of cultures gives birth to hybridity of Afro-American culture. African American can not achieve social equality by emulating white ideals; that cultural equality can be achieved only by teaching the Black racial pride with an emphasis on an African cultural heritage.After the analysis, the readers will have more thoughts and enlightenments on African American culture. The cultural perspectives can help them to read the exquisite complexities of this novel and think of cultural responsibility. The national culture will be more energetic and can be ever-lasting when keeping its own characteristics and meanwhile assimilating excellent parts of other cultures. All these efforts will, hopefully, widen the view of the research on Morrison.