More than a literary device : language as a tool of resistance in minority literature -

Abstract

This thesis will focus on the novel, The Color Purple, (1982) by Alice Walker, two collection of poems, Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996) and Breaking Poems (2008), by Suheir Hammad and the novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (2015), by Marlon James. Walker and Hammad are from the African American and Arab American minority groups in the United States respectively, and James is of Jamaican origin; all three authors have had first-hand experience of oppression and resistance. This thesis will explore the use of language and expression in the aforementioned literary works in order to demonstrate the common characteristics in the way each author articulates political conflicts and social dilemmas. It is of no minor significance that the three works chosen for this purpose are of African and Arab American as well as Jamaican origin. Through the close reading of these texts this thesis will show that, Walker, Hammad and James, in using linguistic techniques specific to their respective ethnicities, are not only making an active choice to resist the dominant group through writing but, more importantly, that their deliberate use of language allows them to create, within their historical and political narratives, a clear and unified minority identity that is expressed in the voices of an entire population that had previously been silenced. In Chapter 1, African American vernacular tradition, during a time in which solidarity among various marginalized groups in the United States began to take shape, will be contextualized through Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Analyzing the political implications behind her artistic expression further allows for the exploration of how Walker uses the African American vernacular as a linguistic tool and how language is a driving force that shapes her characters identities. Chapter 2 will examine Suheir Hammad’s use of Arabic transliteration and how this practice politicizes the works in her poem collections Born Palestinian, Born Black and Breaking Poems. Furthermore