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Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2020, 3(10); doi: 10.25236/AJHSS.2020.031009.

A Postcolonial Utopia: Analysis of Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day

Author(s)

Yuan Tian

Corresponding Author:
Yuan Tian
Affiliation(s)

School of English Language and Culture, Xiamen University Tan Kah Kee College
[email protected]

Abstract

This paper analyzes African American writer Gloria Naylor’s work Mama Day from a postcolonial perspective. Scholars Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha’s concepts of the “subaltern voice”, “the other” and “hegemonic power” are adopted to interpret the protagonists’ complex journey of self-discovery in the novel. Through her philosophical language, Naylor proposes her idea of a state of harmony and equilibrium which can be reached to settle the issues of the paradoxes and conflicts existing in one’s interior world, of the confrontation between white and black world, and of the contradiction between modernity and nature.

Keywords

postcolonial perspective, Mama Day, hegemonic power

Cite This Paper

Yuan Tian. A Postcolonial Utopia: Analysis of Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2020) Vol. 3, Issue 10: 60-70. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2020.031009.

References

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[3] Morison, Toni and Gloria Naylor. “A Conversation.” Southern Review 21.3 (1985): 567-93
[4] Naylor, Gloria. Mama Day. Ticknor & Fields: New York, 1988.
[5] Storhoff, Gary. “The Only Voice is your own”. African American Review. Terre Haute: Spring 1995. Vol. 29.
[6] Whitehead, Anne. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh University Press: U K, 2004.