MISERY BABY: A (RE)VISION OF THE BILDUNGSROMAN BY CARIBBEAN AND U.S. BLACK WOMEN WRITERS

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dc.contributor.advisorPETERSON, CARLA Len_US
dc.contributor.authorRellihan, Heatheren_US
dc.contributor.departmentEnglish Language and Literatureen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2005-08-03T14:47:31Z
dc.date.available2005-08-03T14:47:31Z
dc.date.issued2005-05-27en_US
dc.description.abstractEmerging from a description of the protagonist in Edwidge Danticat's short story "Caroline's Wedding," the phrase "misery baby," is developed as a critical trope to engage questions of gender, as well as individual, national and regional identity in the Caribbean and the United States. Using misery baby as a template, I discuss two other Caribbean Bildungsromane: Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy and Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory. I then analyze Toni Morrison's Beloved to make larger diasporic connections. The characteristics that mark misery baby include her positioning as a coming-of-age character between two nations/cultures; her questioning of false dichotomies; her travel across geographic borders; her ability to negotiate a hybrid identity through a questioning of borders and binaries allowing for the reconceptualization of an ironic nationhood; and lastly her participation in a new way of remembering the past through an understanding of the role of the past in the present.en_US
dc.format.extent1002111 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2552
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledLiterature, Caribbeanen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledLiterature, Americanen_US
dc.titleMISERY BABY: A (RE)VISION OF THE BILDUNGSROMAN BY CARIBBEAN AND U.S. BLACK WOMEN WRITERSen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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