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This work is an exploration of black girlhood in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Sapphire's Push. I paired these two novels together because of the connectedness between the two authors' and their investigation of black girlhood and the issues black girls face. I explore how black girls, Pecola and Precious, are constrained by binary oppositions and constructions of race, gender, and childhood. Because these binaries and constructs mark black girls as inferior, they are rendered invisible by dominant ideologies. Using psychoanalytic and feminist theory, I interrogate how this invisibility is perpetuated by myths that have remained constant and how the black girls must navigate around and combat these mythologies. Finally, I investigate how both Morrison and Sapphire share a multivocality through addressing issues of race, gender, and childhood, and their dismantling of these mythologies.
Advisor: | Davis-McElligatt, Joanna |
Commitee: | Geer, Jennifer, Ingram, Shelley |
School: | University of Louisiana at Lafayette |
Department: | English |
School Location: | United States -- Louisiana |
Source: | MAI 54/06M(E), Masters Abstracts International |
Source Type: | DISSERTATION |
Subjects: | Literature |
Keywords: | Black girlhood, Novels, Toni morrison |
Publication Number: | 1593351 |
ISBN: | 978-1-321-89945-0 |