Delineating the epochs of black history in the novels of Toni Morrison (1973 & 1977)

Abstract

The building of empires and its protection denotes human progress, but it comes with its challenges as no race is completely self-sufficient and for it to survive, it must reach out for resources to expand its civilization and keep it evolving. Most often, instead of these resources to be negotiated on by countries lacking it, they are forcefully taken. This has given impetus to the presence of people of African descent in the United States and how the concept of cultural differentiation was introduced to subjugate its people so that Euro-American ‘missionary explorers’, turned colonial masters could take advantage ofits human and material resources. In delineating the epochs of black history, it becomes imperative to look at the literatures of slavery and cultural assertion. This study therefore, deploys the New Historicism as a theoretical framework to explore black (African American) history, and its survival through the epochs of sociopolitical and economic upheavals as illustrated in Sula (1973) and Song of Solomon (1977) by Toni Morrison.