A Study On The Female Images In Sonia Sanchez's Dramas From The Perspective Of Black Feminist Criticism

As a prominent African American female writer, Sonia Sanchez has been yelling and fighting for the miserable black people in the United States, especially African American women in her theatrical working. In literary works representing the mainstream ideology, the images of African American women are stereotypical faithful and obedient black mammies,strict matriarchs, lazy welfare recipients and lustful prostitutes. These negative images together place African American women in a disadvantageous position both in political and social life. This thesis aims to analyze those African American female images in Sonia Sanchez's plays from the perspective of Black Feminist Criticism through textual analysis of them. The characters of Sanchez's plays give the description of African American women under “Double Oppression” with thick and heavy words. With the exquisite description and bold language, Sanchez gives fierce attack on the discrimination in American society, which shows the influence on African American women's view brought out by the civil rights movement and the movement of power. Expressing wills of African American women to resist, she rebuilds the identity of African American female simultaneously, which gives the whole American society a new understanding of the image of African American female.As a black female writer, Sanchez has great privileges to the themes concerning about African American women. She gets original material of the life of the black from her personal experience and the movement happened around her. Sanchez gives bold attack on the injustice phenomenon in society with militant language, which shows the change in black female's mind brought by the rights movement. She breaks the limitation of the contemporary black female writers. Women images in Sanchez's plays are especially fresh and colorful. They are are brave to fight against discrimination and celebrate their identity as a way to express their physical and spiritual freedom. Although most of them live in the bottom of society and have to bear the oppression from race, gender and class, as soon as their self-consciousness is awakened, they spare no effort to pursue their freedom and fairness.Based on the black feminist criticism theory, this thesis makes a study of African American female images in Sonia Sanchez's drama. From this study, the way that Sanchez reconstructs African American female images by using unique writing style is fully explainedand illustrated.The critical mainly emphasis on the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, but they often overshadowed her great contribution on drama. This thesis analyzes black female's mental process of self-consciousness under “Double Oppression” and emphasis the new ways used in Sanchez's drama to reconstruct African American female images with militant language, irony and special ways of Afro-American expression. Sonia Sanchez has really impressed the world with her unique writing style and rich message carried in her works, especially the new African American female images reconstructed in her drama. Her drama plays an positive role in developing black literature and change the ethnic prejudice from the white's mainstream society to the black.