African Community Life Pattern in some Novels of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston

Abstract

The objective in this paper is to investigate the preservation of the community life that characterizes African people in the novels of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston.

As a matter of fact, in all of Morrison’s novels, the black community is, from one perspective, largely defined by the dominant white society and its standards. The Bluest Eye takes place in Morrison’s home town of Lorain, Ohio. In the novel, the black community of Lorain is separated from the upper-class white community, also known as Lake Shore Park, a place where blacks are not permitted. The setting for Sula is a small town in Ohio, located on a hillside known as “Bottom”. In Song of Solomon, the reader is absorbed into the black community, an entity unto itself, but yet never far removed from the white world. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, actions take place in Eatonville in Florida.

The study has revealed that there exists a strong solidarity in the different communities in the novels selected for this study. Like African communities in Africa, gossips, tradition and other features appear in the novels of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston to make them different from the white communities that boarder them in America. These writers from the African diaspora work to preserve their original communities in their novels.