Toni Morrison's Black Feminist Movement

Toni Morrison is the first black woman writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. She may well be regarded as the most accomplished, innovative and important living novelist of African American Literature. Toni Morrison can be categorized as a literary activist of the Black Feminist Movement which came into being as a response to both the Black Liberation Movement and the Feminist Movement. Its genesis lay in the realization that sexism existed in the Black Liberation Movement and racism in the Women’s Movement and it was formed to fight the interrelated effects of race, gender and class on black women. The prevailing myth about black women was that they had extraordinary strength and could face and survive tremendous difficulties …show more content…
The history of white women was different from that of black women and the nature of oppression that black women faced was also different in many ways. White women refused to acknowledge the effects of race, and black women faced racism in the feminist movement which was essentially a “white,” “middle class” movement. Therefore, slowly but inevitably, a black feminist movement grew which catered to the needs of black women. Firstly, it was deeply connected to black history and black culture and secondly, it worked for the freedom of black women from racist and sexist oppression. Finally, contrary to white feminism, black feminism had no ‘man hating’ agenda. Forgetting the bitterness of the past, black feminists are working with black men for the upliftment of the black …show more content…
Its plot places together two-opposing sets of characters—the residents of Ruby and the Convent inhabitants—who inhabit a locale that is as varying as “an attempted utopia, a refuge, a home, [and] a version of an earthly paradise.” ( 2) The two communities that Morrison contra poses in the novel, may be seen as representative of two different strands in America’s construction of national identity, i.e. assimilation on the one and the integration on the other. Whereas, Ruby emerges as a proud and ‘paradisiacal’ African American town, the Convent is eventually presented as an alternative open community. Thus, Ruby functions as a mirror to American history. Seemingly isolated and self-sufficient, Ruby, “the one black town worth the pain,” (5) was to be a paradise on earth and a utopia for its people. The Convent, on the other hand, evolves towards the creation of a spiritual paradise based on the fluid hybridization of