Sex, violence, and history: Images of Black men in the selected fiction of Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison

The literary tradition of Black American women writers has been one of didacticism and revision. The writers included in this study, Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison follow this tradition in the literature they have created. Specifically, the images they present of the black male character are often revisionist in nature. Each writer has created characters who may be considered as catalysts or marginal characters. This study examines these two character types, the factors which helped produce them, and the telling effects of their relationships with women.; The catalyst character in Gayl Jones' fiction is often sexually abusive and brutal. He must accept the "burden" of history before he is able to assist female characters in their growth and self-awareness or before he experiences his own. The black male character who remains ahistorical and stereotypical is marginal, and is not a part of the community.; Similarly, Alice Walker's marginal characters are firmly grounded in stereotypes. They are also outcasts of the community which rejects their violence and sexual aggression. Catalyst characters in Walker's fiction, however, must become genderless. These male characters fuse both male and female characteristics in order to "survive whole." Only when they are able to do so are they reunited with Walker's community of women.; In Toni Morrison's novels, both catalyst and marginal characters are further delineated. These black male characters often subvert their traditional roles, and are more fully integrated into the communities they share with others.; Together, Jones, Walker, and Morrison have redefined certain images of the black male character. Often, depictions of men who are brutal, sexually aggressive, and violent are tempered by characteristics which ask an integration of society and history, gender and sex.