M. Angkayarkan Vinayaka Selvi

Mothering the Margin:: the Politics of Motherhood in the Novels of Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker M. Angkayarkan Vinayaka Selvi

The book aims at formulating a counter argument to the Euro-American Radical feminist ideology of visualizing motherhood as an oppressive phenomenon. The three African American women writers have been chosen for study in order to argue how, as a counter strategy to the Euro-American theory of motherhood, the African American women view motherhood as an empowering activity. The novels of Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have been treated as an insistent and well-considered expression of motherhood. Through their motherhood discourses, these writers have represented the mother as liberating agent, benevolent crisis manager, teacher, protector, preserver of tradition, cultural ambassador, recreator of root culture, and as history-conscious saviour. The study aims at identifying and establishing the African American mother - prototypes and mothering as presented in the chosen works. It also identifies the mythical archetypal pattern that underlies the formation of the prototypes prescribed in the novels. The author arrives at the conclusion that mothering and motherhood lead women/mothers, children, African American community and the society towards empowerment.