The River to Paradise: Vanishing and Transforming Memories in American Feminist Utopian Novels
Loading...
Date
2023
Authors
Parish, Kennedy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
My thesis compares The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Paradise by Toni Morrison. Both novels focus on exclusionary colorist towns created by Freedmen, twins with fluctuating memories, and marginalized people creating spaces of liberation by transforming their racial-gendered trauma. Through my research, each novel can be placed within the Black utopian literary field through historical analysis, tactics of racial estrangement, and the creation of spaces which exhibit modes of liberation beyond white-male supremacy. In placing the novels in the Black utopian genre, they both demonstrate successful sites of paradise and affirming selfhood through creating a process of self-reconstruction and change outside dominant constructions of place and identity. These novels exemplify Black feminist utopian landscapes that portray the transformation of ascribed identity, memories, and places to build greater conditions of living beyond racial-sexual oppression. Furthermore, these literary narratives allow marginalized subjectivity and spaces to be viscerally felt, re-articulated, and knowable to the world. Bennett and Morrison create utopianism by radially and radically expanding the margins and meaning of space and identities. Rather than making utopia a land-based project constituted by moralized conditions of perfection, these authors locate utopia in finding meaning and water. Like water, paradise becomes a dynamic space always subject to change and open to the endless possibilities people can imagine in overcoming forms of struggle.
Description
56 pages
Keywords
Black utopianism, Paradise, The Vanishing Half, Identity, Black Feminist Space