A Utopian Reading Of Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Café

Gloria Naylor,known for her Black Female Quartet,is acclaimed as the most prominent writer in contemporary African American Women's Literature since Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.Bailey's Café,the last one of her Quartet,is mainly concerned with a group of marginalized characters,most of the members of which are African American women,who suffer great pains in the real world and then get to a liminal utopia centered on the building of Bailey's café,where they live a happy and harmonious life together,expressing Naylor's expectation towards a harmonious world.This thesis attempts to interpret Gloria Naylor's utopian complex expressed in the work of Bailey's Café with the theory of transgressive utopianism.And it consists of three chapters.Chapter One focuses on the dismantlement of black sexual discrimination in the utopia.It is analyzed from two aspects: the reconstruction of black femininity and masculinity.Chapter Two focuses on the dismantlement of the indifference within black women community in the utopia.It is analyzed from two aspects: the delivery of maternal love and the establishment of sisterhood.Chapter Three focuses on the dismantlement of ethnic conflicts in the utopia with the theory of cosmopolitanism put forward by Stan van Hooft.It consists of three aspects: the establishment of global justice,the pursuit of lasting peace and the embrace of values pluralism.The conclusion of the thesis is reached based upon the three chapters above.To dismantle the discriminations and oppressions for black women in American society and to establish the harmony in America even in the world,many traditional hierarchies based on binary oppositions should be broken,establishing a new harmonious balance mechanism and realizing the dismantlement of conflicts.