Examining mothering: Race and abjection in Wilson’s Our Nig and Walker’s The Color Purple

Abstract

The end of slavery sought to grant freedom to Blacks. However, a plethora of African-American novels portray different impressions that this perception of freedom is not as entailed as should be. African-American women writers have subtly and bluntly, portrayed how the African-American mother characters in their novels deal with segregation and abjection as freed women in the society. Employing the Race theory, this paper focuses on mothering as a unique and complex practice of motherhood that empowers the African-American woman and as a non-patriarchal experience in Walker‟s The Color Purple and Wilson‟s Our Nig. The paper concludes that Walker and Wilson‟s novels analysed in this paper are hinged on race and abjection through the mother characters as well as thematic issues discussed in the study. This paper also has implications for African-American studies.