Abstract
This article examines the literary production of two writers from the African diaspora, specifically African American Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), and Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016), to explore their significance as counter-narratives that defy the “official” historiography of enslavement times in order to set the records straight, as it were. By highlighting these women writers’ project of resistance against normative definitions of black bodies, it is my contention that these works effectively mobilize notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Revisiting the harmful and denigrating legacy of stereotypical designation of enslaved women, these writers make significant political and literary interventions to facilitate the recovery, wholeness, and sanctity of the violated and abjected black body. In their attempt to counter ongoing processes of commodification, exploitation, fetishization, and sexualization, I argue that these writers chronicle new forms of identity and agency that promote individual and generational healing and care as forms of protest and resistance against toxic definitions of hegemonic gender and sexuality.
Highlights
Since the slavery era, black people have increasingly become more vocal in their denunciation of the lingering effects of the historical appropriation and mistreatment of black bodies by the dominant ideology
By devising a “new politics of the black body”1, I argue that contemporary women writers of the African diaspora have especially contributed to destabilizing the hegemonic gaze by providing novel ways to represent black bodies and reclaim their right to sexual desire and pleasure
I would like to explore the literary production of two writers from the African diaspora, African American Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (Morrison 2008), and Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (Gyasi [2016] 2017)
Summary
Black people have increasingly become more vocal in their denunciation of the lingering effects of the historical appropriation and mistreatment of black bodies by the dominant ideology. I would like to explore the literary production of two writers from the African diaspora, African American Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (Morrison 2008), and Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (Gyasi [2016] 2017) Their works offer powerful counter-narratives that defy the “official” historiography of enslavement times in order to set the records straight, as it were. Healing played a significant role for enslaved Africans in order to remain whole and healthy despite the unspeakable atrocities they had to witness, both in Africa and in their forced displacement to the Americas Their notion of healing helped them to care for their material and spiritual well-being at both an individual and collective level, enabling both self and communal care.
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