The Daughter's Return : African-American and Caribbean Women's Fictions of History

The Daughter's Return offers a close analysis of an emerging genre in African-American and Caribbean fiction produced by women writers who make imaginative returns to their ancestral pasts. Considering some of the defining texts of contemporary fiction--Toni Morrison's Beloved , Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea , and Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven --Rody discusses their common inclusion of a daughter who returns to the site of her people's founding trauma of slavery through memory or magic. Rody treats these texts as allegorical expressions of the desire of writers newly emerging into cultural authority to reclaim their difficult inheritance, and finds a counter plot of heroines' encounters with women of other racial and ethnic groups running through these works. MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Contents 10 Introduction: The Daughter's Return 14 PART I: AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS 28 1. Toni Morrison's Beloved: History, "Rememory", and a "Clamor for a Kiss" 30 2. Adventures of the Magic Black Daughter: History and "Renaissance" in Contemporary African-American Women's Fictions 52 Mothering the Renaissance 53 Return of the Magic Black Daughter 71 3. Further Adventures of the Magic Black Daughter 88 One Dark Body 88 Variations on Childbirth 106 Coda 114 PART II: CARIBBEAN WOMEN WRITERS 116 4. Caribbean Women's Literature and the Mother of History 118 Recovering the Mother-Island 118 The Caribbean Daughter's Return 128 Jamaica Kincaid and the Maternal Void of History 138 5. Burning Down the House: Daughterly Revision in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea 144 6. Decolonizing Jamaica's Daughter: Learning History in the Novels of Michelle Cliff 162 The Novel as Abeng 162 Becoming History: No Telephone to Heaven 174 7. Crossing Water: Maryse Condé's I, Tituba and the Horizontal Plot 194 Epilogue: History, Horizontality, and the Postcolonial Hester Prynne: On Condé, Mukherjee, and Morrison 214 Notes 224 Works Cited 252 Index 270 A 270 B 270 C 271 D 272 E 272 F 272 G 273 H 273 I 274 J 274 K 274 L 274 M 274 N 276 O 276 P 276 R 276 S 277 T 277 V 278 W 278 Y 278 Z 278 Part I: African-american Women Writers -- 1. Toni Morrison's Beloved: History, Rememory, And A Clamor For A Kiss -- 2. Adventures Of The Magic Black Daughter: History And Renaissance In Contemporary African-american Women's Fictions -- 3. Further Adventures Of The Magic Black Daughter -- Part Ii: Caribbean Women Writers -- 4. Caribbean Women's Literature And The Mother Of History -- 5. Burning Down The House: Daughterly Revision In Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea -- 6. Decolonizing Jamaica's Daughter: Learning History In The Novels Of Michelle Cliff -- 7. Crossing Water: Maryse Conde's I. Tituba And The Horizontal Plot -- Epilogue: History, Horizontality, And The Postcolonial Hester Prynne: On Conde, Mukherjee, And Morrison. Caroline Rody. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 241-258) And Index. This work offers an analysis of an emerging genre in African-American and Caribbean fiction: the novels of black women writers who have returned to their ancestral past. Novels such as Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea" are assessed. The Daughter's Return offers a close analysis of an emerging genre in African American and Caribbean fiction: the novels of black women writers who have returned to their ancestral pasts. __The Daughter's Return____Beloved____Wide Sargasso Sea____No Telephone to Heaven__