A Study Of The Oppressions In By The Light Of My Father’s Smile From Black Feminism

Alice Walker is a famous modern black woman writer and one of the souls ofblack woman writing, as well as writing renaissance. Walker focuses on blackwomen’s living condition and their plight and struggle against oppressions. She pointsout that the multiple oppressions of sexism, racism and class prejudice imposed onblack women in the American society. Her works not only descript and reveal thesufferings of black women under the oppressions, but also show their awakening ofself-consciousness and desire for freedom.Compared with her previous novels, By the Light of My Father’s Smile refers tomany fields from themes, characters to settings. The theme of novel not onlydescribes the plight of African Americans, but also reveals the miserable life of otherminority races, such as Indians and Gypsies. And the characters in the novel refer toAfrican Americans and also involve European immigrants to America, Indians andGreek. Besides, the story is not only happened in America, but also extends to Mexicoand Greece. In the novel, from the perspective of black feminism, Alice Walkerdescribed the plight of black women and other colored women under the oppressionsfrom men, and call for real equality and harmony in the society.Therefore, from the perspective of black feminism, this thesis, firstly, analyzesthe conflicts between the main characters in the novel and the oppressions from mento black women and other colored women. Then it shows the two generations react to the oppressions differently. The new generation is not like their grandmothers ormothers who have no self-consciousness or self-esteem and are afraid of fighting, theybegan to awaken and fight for their fate. Facing to the cruel oppressions, theuniversity teacher Magdalena, writer Susannah and independent operator Paulinechose the personalized way to live for themselves, struggled against the society rulesand subverted the traditional family structure. At last, in order to get rid of oppression,black women not only begin to awaken and struggle but also need to unite black mento realize self-liberation. The thesis points out only black women unit black men canbuild a harmonious relationships of gender and race and then realize the wholenessand existence of humanity.