Afro-American Writer: Forced Immigrant/Fragmentary Native Consciousness

아프리카계 미국 작가 - 강요된 이민자 의식/ 파편적 토박이 의식

Even though Paule Marshall and Ishmael Reed have differences of gender, generation, and literary techniques, they share common points in dealing with cultural conflicts and racial discrimination in the United States as Afro-American Writers. As black minority writers, Marshall and Reed write out of a perspective of forced immigrant/fragmentary native consciousness. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the protagonist's reaction to racial prejudice, different cultures and their attempts to reconcile and to coexist with other races and their culture in these writers' representative works. Marshall's uniqueness as a contemporary black female artist stems from her ability to write from the three levels, that is, African American and Caribbean black. So, Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones represents an attempt to identify, analyze, and resolve the conflict between cultural loss/displacement and cultural domination/hegemony. Reed's Japanes by Spring offers a blistering attack upon the various cultural and racial factions of the academy and the bankrupt value systems in America. Reed's depiction of Jack London College's existing racial problems-later compounded by the cultural dilemmas that accompany the Japanese occupation of the institution-reveals his interest in highlighting the ways in which any monoculturalist ideology ultimately results in racist and culturally exclusive policies. Marshall's and Reed's novels provide opportunities for reader to explore various manifestations of intercultual and interethnic dynamics. They present the possibility of reconciliation and coexistence between different race and ethnic cultures through asserting a cultural hybridity and multiculturalism.