Work

Post What? Disarticulating Post-Discourses in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: In the midst of the proliferation of post-discourses, this essay investigates how Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015) offers a timely exploration of the hurting Black female body that calls into question, if not outright refutes, whether Americans have entered a post-racial, post-Black, and post-feminist era. This essay opens with a critical context section that situates God Help the Child within and against post-discourses, before examining how resemblances with Morrison’s prior works like Beloved (1987) and The Bluest Eye (1970) confirm that the legacy of slavery still dictates the way Black female bodies are seen and treated in twenty-first-century America. Ultimately, what this study intends is to speak the unspeakable: race still matters despite the silencing effects of post-discourses.

Source: Humanities

DOI: 10.3390/h5040080

Author: Delphine Gras

Institution: Florida Gulf Coast University

Language: English

Topic: American Literature and Culture

Subfield: History

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Gender equality, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,689