Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin - by Trudier Harris (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In James Baldwin's fiction, according to Trudier Harris, Black women are conceptually limited figures until their author ceases to measure them by standards of the community fundamentalist church. Harris analyzes works written over a thirty-year period to show how Baldwin's development of female character progresses through time.

Black women in the early fiction, responding to their elders as well as to religious influences, see their lives in terms of duty as wives, mothers, sisters, and lovers. Failure in any of these roles leads to feelings of guilt and the expectation of damnation. In his later works, Baldwin adopts a new point of view, acknowledging complex extenuating circumstances in lieu of pronouncing moral judgement. Female characters in works written at this stage eventually come to believe that the church affords no comfort.

Baldwin subsequently makes villains of some female churchgoers, and caring women who do not attend church become his most attractive characters. Still later in Baldwin's career, a woman who frees herself of guilt by moving completely beyond the church attains greater contentment than almost all of her counterparts in the earlier works.

Review Quotes

"Harris breaks new ground with this book. Cross-gender representations have been a problem for black writers and critics for some time, but no one before has systematically examined a writer's body of work to explore the topic. . . . the book is thorough and useful, and sets a model for further cross-gender explorations of black writers."--Nellie McKay "Signs"

About the Author

Trudier Harris is an author specializing in African American literature and folklore. Professor emerita from the University of Alabama, she earned her bachelor's degree from Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and her master's and PhD from The Ohio State University. Some of her other books include From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature, Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison; and The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller's Craft in Zora Neale Hurston.