《托马斯和比尤拉》中的黑人性和黑人中产阶级家族史书写

The Blackness and Family History of Black Middle-Class Families in Thomas and Beulah

美国非裔桂冠女诗人丽塔·达夫的获奖诗集《托马斯和比尤拉》被学界普遍视为她回归“黑人性”的作品。达夫通过对“黑人性”的性别化书写和流动性书写成功质疑并协商了“黑人性”是由种族差异性和阶级、性别一致性决定的观点。在诗集中,“黑人性”演化为一个异质性场域和一个种族、性别、阶级的多元对话空间,而这一独特的“黑人性”再现方式在很大程度上质疑并颠覆了美国非裔身份书写中的种族单一维度和由此生成的黑人刻板印象。同时,在夫妻之间的隐性对话和个人与历史之间的显性对话形成的张力之中,达夫书写了一部有态度的美国黑人中产阶级家族史。

Thomas and Beulah,a Pulitzer Prize finalist by Rita Dove,the first African-American woman poet laureate,is appraised as Dove's turning to blackness.In this collection of narrative poems,Dove dwells on the gendered aspects of blackness and its mobility,thereby interrogating and negotiating the notion that blackness is solely determined by racial difference,class and gender conformities.Within this work,blackness evolves into a location of heterogeneity and a multi-dimensional dialogic space about race,gender and class.This unique way of representation of blackness in some degree questions and subverts the single racial dimension in African American identity construction and the black stereotype therefrom.Meanwhile,within the tension from the implicit dialogue between husband and wife and the explicit dialogue between the individual and history,Dove narrates a history of African American middle-class family with a distinctive attitude.