On The New Images Of Black Women In Mama Day

Gloria Nayloris one of the m ost prestigious black wom en writers in Am erican literature who enjoys the sam e reputation with Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.As an American woman writer,Naylor devotes hers elf to the writing of black wom en.In her major works,she explores the history and des tiny of blacks,and pays close attention to their life experiences and inner world in orde r to expandtheir rich culture and present their authentic outlook.In 1988,Naylor published her Mama Day.In this novel,Naylor tries to subvert the tra dition of American dominant culture th at had distorted black women,and attempts to reshape a varietyof new images of black women.For a long tim e,the dominant society of Am erica which advocates the ideology ofwhite patriarchal suprem acy,defines various stereotyped and controlling im ages for black women---Mammy,Matriarch,Welfare mother and the whore in order to intens ify the so-called “pure images” of the whites and to control black women in a subordinate position.However,these dem onized imagescause black w omen to suf fer severely in their survival and development.In the mid-nineteenth century,with the development of black feminism,numerous black women writers began to realize that it was their duty to reshape the new im ages of black women.Thus,black wom en writers seek their “specifically black fem ale language” and bega n to tell their own stories in order to debunk and subvert various stereotyped and controlling images of black women.Compared with other contem porary American women writers,Gloria Naylor is good at portraying various black wom en with new images in her works.In Mama Day,Gloria Naylor successfully creates several black wom en with new im ages who challenge the negativ e images imposed by the dom inant society and white literature.Moreover,such a bold them e is exactly the one which is promoted by black feminists.This thesis will apply the black feminist thought proposed by Patricia Hill Collins,which is challe nging the imposed stereotypes of black wom en by the w hite culture,to analyze the n ew images of the several black wom en in Mama Day.At the same time,this thesis compares and analyzes the images of black women in Mama Day with other contemporary black women writers’ works in order to highlight Naylor’s new images.