The Voice of Silent Toxic Mothers in Morrison’s A Mercy and Albeshr’s Hend and the Soldiers

This paper analytically compares Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) to Albeshr’s Hend and the Soldiers (2006) to explore the maternal position in Western and Middle Eastern literatures and give the silent mothers voice. These novels depict rudimentary social systems predicated on deep inequalities of class and gender; they highlight the commonality of mothers’ experiences regardless of their class, race, or nationality. In A Mercy, the black mother discards her daughter to protect her from a malevolent master, while in Hend and the Soldiers, the uneducated Arab mother arranges her daughter’s marriage to free her from the domination of the patriarchal society. The daughters consider their mothers as toxic parents and relate all evil in their lives to them. These novels are narrated mainly from a daughter point of view, and they share the themes of the disintegrated mother-daughter relationship and search for identity. This type of narration foregrounds the daughterly perspectives and subordinates the maternal voice (Hirsch, 1989, p. 163). Applying the elements presented in Marianne Hirsch’s Mother/Daughter Plot facilitates the deconstruction of the idea of silent toxic mothers and gives mothers the opportunity to speak for themselves. According to Hirsch, when daughters become mature enough to accept their problems and failures, they become not only real women but also part of their mothers’ stories by listening carefully. Thus, I argue that mothers’ voices are heard when their subjectivity is explored through their stories narrated in their daughters’ memories, in the mothers’ self-vindication, and by surrogate mothers.

The monster in the dark: the monstrous maternal and abject black mother in Toni Morrison's Beloved

The monster in the dark: the monstrous maternal and abject black mother in Toni Morrison's Beloved

The monster in the dark: the monstrous maternal and abject black mother in Toni Morrison's Beloved

The monster in the dark: the monstrous maternal and abject black mother in Toni Morrison's Beloved

In the State’s Shadow of Fair Housing: D.C. (White) Business Leaders and their Revanchist Desires

This article traces D.C. White business leaders’ advocacy of (low-income) Black suburban relocation and White upper-class resettlement in D.C.’s central neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s. By examining the organizational papers and memos of meetings and policy documents from the Federal City Council, a D.C. nonprofit advocacy organization for the city’s leading business and real estate leaders, I document how predominantly White business leaders appropriated fair housing and regional fair share political stances to articulate revanchist desires. These leaders’ revanchist rhetoric depicted the Black poor—especially the single Black mother with children—as the primary figure of neighborhood blight and domestic deviance. In the wake of these revanchist politics, low-income Black mothers remained principal victims of pro-mobility policies and gentrification agendas that forced them to continually move to support demolition or redevelopment. This article affirms low-income Black mother activists’ political support for placemaking and low-cost, family-friendly, and well-maintained communities.

Reconstructing Identity through Voyages in/ out in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child: A Psychogeographical Analysis

People’s voyages to different geographies may have diverse purposes. While some are just flâneurs taking routes aimlessly, others are stalkers with a preliminary idea about the significance of their derives. Aimless or not, the different geographies visited inevitably shape and reshape the walker’s character and psyche. This article analyzes Morrison’s latest novel, God Help the Child (2015), in the prism of the theory of psychogeography, which studies the correlative relation between psyche and geography. The article posits the question how does the novel’s protagonist, Bride, grows from a flâneur to a stalker in the light of the degrading capitalist American society and how do the different voyages out initiate her to some metaphorical voyages in, enabling her to reconstruct her identity as a black female and a future black mother. Bride’s wonderings about her identity, erased by a character called Booker, lead her to wandering to different territories (Decagon, the countryside and whisky) each of which dictates on her new ideologies and ethics, which, in turn, alter her behavior and outlook. The article evetually elucidates how the final station in Bride’s journey is a cathartic one through which she reclaims her freedom, recovers her identity and empowers herself and the black community.