The Politics Of Love And Marriage

It is well known that African American women's literature plays an irreplaceable role in the history of African American literature.It takes a long time for black women's writing to develop into such a flourishing and popular state since the first poem composed by Lucy Terry in 1746.During over two hundred years' development,there have appeared many famous women writers such as Georgia Douglass Johnson,Zora Neale Hurston,Frances Harper,Toni Morrison and Alice Walker,whose works mainly focus on the oppression on race,sex and class of black women.Their works have been well recognized and studied by many scholars during the past years.In the 1990 s,a number of novels about the life of middle-class black women were published and highly acclaimed by readers,which made their writer become the first best-selling African American popular fiction writer.The writer's name is Terry McMillan.This thesis analyzes the theme of love and marriage relationship in Waiting to Exhale,a book marking an important turning point in McMillan's career.It consists of six parts: an introduction,four chapters and a conclusion.The introduction provides necessary background information about the writer and her works and it also includes the literature review.The first chapter briefly analyzes the theme of love and marriage relationship in African American literature.The second chapter probes into the theme of love and marriage relationship in Waiting to Exhale.The third chapter is divided into two parts.The first part is an introduction to black feminist thought,the definition of black femininity and the stereotypical images of black women.The second part is a discussion on Terry McMillan's redefinition of black femininity on the basis of the rigid cognitions of black women's images in mainstream culture and the black femininity defined by previous African American women writers.The fourth chapter explores the reasons for McMillan's development of the definition of black femininity,which include the driving force of social changes and the influence of Terry McMillan's own personal experiences.At last,the author draws a conclusion that McMillan endows black femininity with several new connotations through the careful delineation of the theme of love and marriage relationship.Her redefinition of black femininity is a forceful revolt against the stereotypes enforced by the mainstream culture and an enrichment of the black femininity defined by her predecessors.