A Black Voice The Black woman fights against oppression not only because of her race, but also because of her gender. Slavery created the perception of black inferiority; sexism dates back to the beginnings of the Western tradition. White men have shaped nearly every aspect of culture, especially literature. Alice Walker infuses her experiences as a black woman growing up in Georgia during the civil rights era into the themes and characters of her contemporary novels. Walker's novels communicate the psychology of a black woman in the Western social order, touch on “the exoticism of black women,” and challenge stereotypes shaped by white men in power (Bobo par. 24). In The Color Purple Walker illustrates the life of a woman in an ordinary black family in the rural South; in her article "Matriarchal Themes in Black Family Literature", Rubin criticizes the fact that Walker emphasizes not only that the black woman is oppressed within society, but also that external oppression causes her to internalize her inferiority. Every theme in Walker's writings is told through the eyes of a black woman; using her personal experiences to develop short stories and novels, Walker gives the black woman a voice in literature. Walker demonstrates through her writings that the oppression of Black women is both internal and external. Like most of the characters in her novels, Walker is a product of her racist, rural, Southern environment in which the rural black woman faces oppression at every turn. Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944 at the beginning of the civil rights era (Whitted). Walker faced segregation and discrimination while growing up in one of the most notoriously racist Southern states of the 19th and 20th centuries. She......middle of paper......August 27, 2013.Smith, Barbara. “Toward a Black Feminist Critique.” JSTOR. University of Illinois Press, March 1978. Web. August 27, 2013. Walker, Alice. "Official Biography of Alice Walker." Alice Walker The official website of the American poet-novelist. Np, nd, Web. August 27, 2013- - -. The color purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Print.- - -. In Love & Trouble: Black Women's Stories. Orlando: Harcourt, 2001. Print.Whitted, Qiana. "Alice Walker (born 1944)." New Encyclopedia of Georgia. Np, September 4, 2013. Web. October 9, 2013. Farrell, Susan. “Fight versus Flight: A Reevaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's “Everyday Use”” Short Fiction Studies. ProQuest, Spring 1998. Web. February 23, 2014.Rubin, Roger H. “Matriarchal Themes in Black Family Literature: Implications for Family Life Education.” The Family Coordinator 27.1 (1978): 33-41. JSTOR. Network. February 23. 2014.
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