Surrogate Families and the Role of the Community in Octavia Butler's Kindred, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage

This thesis offers a close reading of three neo-slave narratives, Octavia Butler's "Kindred," Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and Charles Johnson's "Middle Passage" focusing on the themes of slave and post-slavery community, family and gender in relation to the historical trauma of slavery. This thesis first addresses the historiographical debates about the agency and resistance of enslaved people within a system of systematic oppression and dispossession and then demonstrates how the three novels negotiate this issue. Both "Kindred" and "Beloved" probe into the limitations and possibilities of the community as a site of black male and female empowerment. Instead of romanticizing life in the free and enslaved black communities, both Butler and Morrison challenge these sites and call attention to the costs of resistance to the slavery regime. On the other hand, in his effort to liberate his fiction from black identity politics that foreground the works of Butler and Morrison, Johnson...Show moreThis thesis offers a close reading of three neo-slave narratives, Octavia Butler's "Kindred," Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and Charles Johnson's "Middle Passage" focusing on the themes of slave and post-slavery community, family and gender in relation to the historical trauma of slavery. This thesis first addresses the historiographical debates about the agency and resistance of enslaved people within a system of systematic oppression and dispossession and then demonstrates how the three novels negotiate this issue. Both "Kindred" and "Beloved" probe into the limitations and possibilities of the community as a site of black male and female empowerment. Instead of romanticizing life in the free and enslaved black communities, both Butler and Morrison challenge these sites and call attention to the costs of resistance to the slavery regime. On the other hand, in his effort to liberate his fiction from black identity politics that foreground the works of Butler and Morrison, Johnson explores the cultural hybridity of his protagonist, but he ultimately only reproduces patriarchal values he overtlty parodies.Show less

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Surrogate Families and the Role of the Community in Octavia Butler's Kindred, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage