Spirituality and Community

1
Spirituality and Community

• 1. Novel as summary of first term
• 2. Challenging the stereotypes
• -Black Family
• - Black Male/Female Relationships
• 3. Reclaiming Language and Spirituality

2
Novel as Response to slavery

• Rewrites the discourse of slavery in the Americas
• Challenges racialized and gendered stereotypes
  originating in slavery

3
Novel as Response to 20th century strategies of
progress

• 1. Provides a bridge between the integrationists
  and separatists
• 2. Offers a radically redefined progressive
  narrative
• 3. Represents an alternative spirituality
• 4. Challenges the power of the dominant
  language.

4
(No Transcript)
5
Gloria Naylors Mama Day

• (Re)Construction of the Black Family
• disruption/fragmentation of slavery
• single motherhood and absent fatherhood
• crime, delinquency and educational disengagement.

6
Diaspora Notion of Time

• According to Sheila Smith Mckoy, a Diaspora
• notion of time is a fusion of African cyclical
• time and the disruption of this cycle forced by
• the Middle Passage (209). Because the
• persistency of Diaspora time marks a peoples
• commitment to cultural survival, black women
• writers, she maintains, by disrupting Western
• temporal notions of time, can challenge
• Western attempts to disfigure Diaspora
• culture (Limbo Contest 209).