Missing Mom: The (Re-)Assessment of Gender and Motherhood in Richard Wright's Black Boy, Toni Morrison's Sula and Jazz, and Audre Lorde's Zami
Author
Halter, Paige Ann Julia
Subject
Washington and Lee University -- Honors in English
Black boy (Wright, Richard)
Jazz (Morrison, Toni)
Sula (Morrison, Toni)
Lorde, Audre
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Mother and child
Metadata
Show full item recordDescription
This paper will examine the dynamics of mother-child relationships within African American literature and the ways in which children internalize socially constructed gender roles within not just a male-dominated society, but a white male-dominated society. Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) and Toni Morrison's Jazz (1992) present examples of works that invest heavily in the relationships between mother and son; Morrison's Sula (1973) and Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) deal with the ties between mother and daughter. The following study will focus on these four works and the way their protagonists -- two real people, and two fictional characters -- evaluate the extent to which mothers fulfill their children's expectations of mothering. [From Introduction]