Abstract
The article discusses how black women keep contacts with both black and white worlds in novels written by African-American female writers. In Toni Morrison’s (1970) The Bluest Eye , Pecola Breedlove keeps contact with the white world through her assimilationist behavior; in Alice Walker’s (1982) The Color Purple , Celie freezes herself in the black world by playing the role of the nationalist Negro; finally, in Lorraine Hansberry’s (1987) A Raisin in the Sun , Mama Younger joins black and white worlds together when she develops a catalyst agenda, as she moves to a white neighborhood.
Highlights
West (1993) describes the role of the black intellectual. For him, this is a role that must consider American society as the one in which the Anglo-American and the African-American are interdependent cultures
With these words, West (1993) describes the role of the black intellectual
Different from Pecola, who favors an uncritical and ‘deferential disposition toward the Western parent’, succumbs to the Anglo-American ideals of beauty and, perishes; unlike Celie, who develops a conscious isolation from the white world and is marked by a ‘nostalgic search for the African’ parent and, projects an alliance to the black culture on the basis of a critical and growing process of maturity; Mama’s trajectory in both the black and white cultures is addressed to an interplay of the two worlds
Summary
West (1993) describes the role of the black intellectual. For him, this is a role that must consider American society as the one in which the Anglo-American and the African-American are interdependent cultures. Oppressed by the beauty conflicts she has to deal with in the black community, Pecola, later, re-addresses her search for identity, self and humanity and, naïvely, aligns herself with the white world.
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