论《布鲁斯特街的女人们》中的城市镜像与空间阈限

格罗里亚·内勒的《布鲁斯特街的女人们》书写了第二次黑人大迁徙之际一群从美国南方来到北方城市谋生存的黑人女性。本文以城市空间为切入点,分析小说集中黑人女性如何带着理想化的城市镜像进入北方城市,进而感受和体验城市的空间阈限,而她们作为城市空间的栖居者又如何在改变空间关系的过程中起到自己的作用。作家内勒将创作的背景放在具有象征意义的虚构的布鲁斯特街,旨在表明美国城市对于黑人而言就如同这条破败的街道,黑人们在此努力挣扎,艰难地追逐"非裔美国梦"。

Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Street describes a group of African American women who came to northern cities from southern America during the second great wave of migration. This paper analyzes how black women in this story collection pour into northern cities with an idealized urban mirror image, and then experience and suffer the liminality of urban space. The paper further explores how these black women as the immigrants and inhabitants of urban space try to change the dead-end Brewster street into a livable space. Gloria Naylor set the symbolic fictional Brewster street as the setting of her story collection, aiming to illustrate that American cities are like this dead-end Brewster street for blacks, and black people are struggling and striving there to pursue their "African American Dream".