The Evolution Of Black Women Images In American Literature Of 20～(th) Century

The development of black women images in American literature of 20th century goes through the course of from "the loss of discourses" to "the returning of discourses". Since long time ago, black women were treated as clumsy housemaids who took care of children or targets of sexual desire in traditional white literature and black men authors' literature. Black women writers who wanted to change the images of black women, which were arbitrarily defamed, shouldered the responsibility of constructing the new images of black women as well as deconstructing the old ones.Although black women writers followed the white middle-class value to portray the black women images in the beginning of 20th century, they built up the positive black women images who struggled for freedom and equality at the first time. Thereafter, Zora Neale Hurston, the outrunner of Afro-American women literature, portrayed an anti-tradition black woman image whose self-consciousness awakens. After the Harlem Renaissance, the black men writers' "protest literature" that are full of racial conflicts occupied mainstream, Hurston and her positive black women images were neglected. With the development of Black Civil Rights and Women's Movement, a large of black women writers inherited women literature tradition from Hurston all over again till the sixties of the 20th century. They not only accused the racial discrimination and oppression of American society, but also concentrated on the real lives of black women. They began to consider black women as a special race and portrayed a series of new black women images from different angles. They demonstrated difficult lives of black women while facing the racial and sexual discrimination and their struggling for women's equal rights. Through the analysis of Afro-American women literature, thesis generalizes the essential evolution of black women images compared with white literature and black men authors' literature.