On The Loss Of Self Of The Middle-aged African American Housewife

Compared with the growth and literary creation environment of the African-American women writers in Civil Rights Movement in the 1950 s and 1960 s, those of the new generation of African-American women writers in the post-Civil Rights Era has been dramatically changed. Terry Mc Millan, its representative, stands bravely outside of the tradition of African American women’s writing. She stops crying for black women’s sufferings from racial and sexual oppression, withdraws from empowering the black female community, offers little condemnation of male hegemony. Instead, she turns to depict marriage, family, and career predicaments encountered by black women under the new social situation.The Interruption of Everything, published by Terry Mc Millan in 2005, fully presents Mc Millan’s concern for contemporary African women’s situation and their problems, and her attempts to find out outlets for those troubled women. This novel revolves around several themes, including dilemmas of midlife, sisterhood, love and marriage, and female self. The thesis centers on the theme of Marilyn’s loss of self, and then analyses the reasons for loss of self, Marilyn’s reflections on loss of self, and her efforts to construct self.The thesis consists of five parts: an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion. Its framework is as follows: the introduction part briefly provides the background information about the author, the outline of the story and sorts out the past research results about Mc Millan and her works at home and abroad; Chapter One presents Marilyn’s present living situation—loss of self in the confined world of home and its two reasons for loss of self; Chapter Two probes into Marilyn’s reflections on her situation resulting from the interruptions in her recent life and reference to lives of women around her; Chapter Three deals with Marilyn’s efforts to construct herself as Marilyn Dupree for a change; and the last part is the conclusion that the enviable suburban happy African American housewife is experiencing the unbearable frustration and emptiness at the middle age, with which tremendous women readers identify well enough, not exclusively black women.From the middle-aged African American housewife Marilyn’s story, we can detect the contemporary emerging African American woman writer Mc Millan’s concern for women, not limited to the black women. Almost every concern and issue and problem reflected in Mc Millan’s novel has closely related to most of contemporary western women enjoying material advantages, particularly in this day and age.