African American narratives are peopled with subjectivities struggling to retrieve and reconstruct themselves as persons--and thus citizens--through and against American legal narratives, where personhood and citizens...African American narratives are peopled with subjectivities struggling to retrieve and reconstruct themselves as persons--and thus citizens--through and against American legal narratives, where personhood and citizenship are concerned. Thus, there was the problematic for blacks of how to apply citizenship to their corporeal existence when they were labeled as property. The historical legal narrative of America was constructed on the power of the dominant white elite to prevent the emergence of a narrative of African American life other than that which they authorize, legislate, and narrate. To this end, it has been argued, that narratives in African American literature treat the question of the legal status of African Americans or have it as a fundamental trope of struggle in the narrative. This idea suggests that the law＇s ability as a shaper and determinant of African American social identity, presets the narrative base for African American narrative. This paper examines the relationship between ＂＇laws of separations＂, and African American narrative through a rereading of works of two contemporary novelists, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor. Their works, the author argue, are counter-positioned narratives that create contentious dialogue and elaborate the way in which segregationist codes and Jim Crow laws are grounded in the very nature of citizenship for African Americans.展开更多
文摘African American narratives are peopled with subjectivities struggling to retrieve and reconstruct themselves as persons--and thus citizens--through and against American legal narratives, where personhood and citizenship are concerned. Thus, there was the problematic for blacks of how to apply citizenship to their corporeal existence when they were labeled as property. The historical legal narrative of America was constructed on the power of the dominant white elite to prevent the emergence of a narrative of African American life other than that which they authorize, legislate, and narrate. To this end, it has been argued, that narratives in African American literature treat the question of the legal status of African Americans or have it as a fundamental trope of struggle in the narrative. This idea suggests that the law＇s ability as a shaper and determinant of African American social identity, presets the narrative base for African American narrative. This paper examines the relationship between ＂＇laws of separations＂, and African American narrative through a rereading of works of two contemporary novelists, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor. Their works, the author argue, are counter-positioned narratives that create contentious dialogue and elaborate the way in which segregationist codes and Jim Crow laws are grounded in the very nature of citizenship for African Americans.
