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Legacies and literacies: Life lessons from black grandmothers and other matrilineal substitutes
Abstract
Transnationally, black women, due to their “multiple subjectivities” of race, gender, and other identities, create unique solutions to avoid victimization. Solutions are primarily invented by re-viewing the past in relation to the present and using the gained knowledge to succeed within the present constraints and environment. Employing the past experiences of other familial members or matrilineal substitutes, usually female, to re-structure the present gives black women opportunities to develop ancestral pride. Within the following texts, this reclamation happens primarily through “oral” formats: written storytellings of black women's lives. Determined to resist oppression, these authors use many devices such as repetition, revision, analytical commentary and interrogation, mythical language, and storytelling—both “oral” and written—to privilege the heritage of black women authors and reveal the intricate oppressions of dominant cultures and languages. During this reclamation of power and language, authors create characters from which the protagonist determines her own development Quite often these characters, usually more socially experienced, more mature, and female, maintain an example of resistance for the protagonist, and from which she will create her own method of resistance and identity within her future. Re-writing experience, re-framing literacies, and creating new images of black women become learned acts of rebellion within books about and by black women authors, specifically Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (United States), Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (United States), Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey (Trinidad, Caribbean), Edwidge Danticat's Kirk? Krak! (Haiti), and Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother (Antigua, Caribbean). Offering alternative views of reality, one which values black women, non-linear imaginations, and African and Caribbean traditions, the voices of these autobiographers, storytellers, and authors demonstrate and teach the ability to transform language, re-experience the past; and present new images for the future.
Subject Area
American literature|Caribbean literature|African Americans|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Putnam, Amanda Ann, "Legacies and literacies: Life lessons from black grandmothers and other matrilineal substitutes" (1999). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9936769.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9936769