To Be Located At A Home-place: A Study On Cultural Space Construction In Tar Baby

By focusing on Son Greens and Jadine Childs’ changing relation and culturalchoices, this thesis explores the construction of cultural spaces on the bi-levels ofstory and discourse space in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby with the help of culturalgeographic perspective and narrative space theories, in order to find out the author’scultural concern over the Black’s self-location in the contemporary context.The research is carried out from configuration, experiences in and reconstructionof cultural spaces in the novel. It starts by introducing Tar Baby, its author andrelevant reviews, the theoretical basis for narrative space study and significantly, thedefinition of cultural space as the starting point of the research. The main body firstlycaptures the white-dominated Caribbean cultural space where two protagonists meetunder the division configured in blacks’ mind-sets, locations and perspectives. Then itshifts to their journeys in mainland America, where they experience intimaterelationship but end with separation due to the inexorable mobility of contemporarylife. The thesis also tries to track Morrison’s reconstructive efforts condensed in theidea of resistance in geographical formation, psychological restoration and plot design.Based on above analysis, the thesis concludes with a review on the diversity andopenness of black cultural space, the home-place, for blacks to be located at.