Confronting The Shadow Side to Heal The Black Self: Southern Black Female Writers Theorize Blackness, Love, Beauty, and Spirit

Abstract

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?” This question is posed by Minnie Ransom, an old, fabled Southern healer in Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters, to Velma Henry, a Southern Black woman in her forties, after Velma’s fight against the oppression of society in 1970s Georgia has led to her depression (Bambara 1). This question that Bambara, a Southern writer, asks in the 1980s, has also been asked by other Southern black women writers as they sought to envision a healthy black self that could build stronger families and communities and fight for change in the larger society. What these writers recognized was that the legacies of slavery and segregation, and the continuing realities of discrimination and disregard for black life and vitality, have left black Americans with an unrecognized, unresolved shadow that disrupts their connections to self and others in their families and communities. The novels of Toni Morrison, Zora Hurston, Toni Bambara, and Alice Walker, as well as scholars like bell hooks, Sally McMillen and Danielle McGuire, lay bare the trauma of American racism and sexism on black women in the U.S., and begin to imagine a path of healing and restoration that will revitalize individuals, families, and communities, allowing them to obtain their wholeness and to continue to develop and build a future for their progeny. Because wisdom is taken from the womb of suffering, I will critically examine five literary texts using the approaches and methodologies of trauma theory, critical race theory, and black feminism to consider how Southern Black female writers confront shadows to construct the road of self-love, understanding genuine beauty, and appreciating their spirits. Members of the Southern Black communities of the mid-twentieth century represented in the texts in my study needed to confront the shadows of violence toward black Americans and the continuing deprivation and discrimination they were forced to confront just to survive in order to achieve personal awakening, creativity, and energy that would benefit the individual and her/his family and community. Southern black women writers theorize that the progress of Black families and communities is tied to restorative investments in Black love, beauty, and spirit, that “a change in society is directly linked to a change in the individual” (University of California Television). As author and theorist Alice Walker says, “[Black individuals] need to look back to see how [they] managed [yesterday] and to learn the lessons that were left there” (Walker, “Alice Walker on the ‘Rosie’ Show”). Ultimately, this project aims to analyze what the southern black female writers have done through their literature, which is to give their readers creative ways to deal with their shadows and reach the best possible level of personal agency and definition of self-love within their families and communities. Chapter 1 will start with the eyewitness account of Miss Ozy, an eyewitness of South Carolina in the 1960s. I will then trace the history of Southern Black women as individuals in families and communities through Sally G. McMillen’s Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South, Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street, and S. N. M. Jones’s Black Women Need Love Too. Through these books, I will describe how invisible problems move from one generation to the next and eventually reach the mid-20th century to form the “shadow side.” Using Jung’s concept of the shadow side of the self as a problematic and unconscious aspect of personality, and trauma theorists to examine how personality can be warped by sustained, multivariate violence and assault, I will posit the obstacles that stand in opposition to personal wholeness and wellness of Black Americans. This chapter will conclude with why the southern black female writers confront shadow in their writings to theorize Black concepts of love, beauty, and spirit. Chapter 2 explores how they use the discovery of the shadow to “open the first door to the Self” because we house “the discarded aspects of our personality” there; we have to rediscover these elements to begin the journey toward individuation (Park 191–192). We cannot change the past, but we can learn from history to improve the present for ourselves. With this understanding, I will examine and analyze Morrison’s masterwork Beloved, focusing on Sethe, the former Southern slave. I will argue that Beloved, as a ghost, is Sethe’s shadow, which exists and lives in her unconscious as vital material that destroys her psyche and causes a disaster that crushes the rest of her family. I will next show how Sethe confronts her shadow to achieve self-love by passing through three phases of confrontation: encounter, manifestation, and assimilation. I will conclude by discussing the positive and negative impacts of confronting (or not confronting) the shadow side of the self. Chapter 3 will continue to trace the effect of the shadow side of the self by examining Pauline and Cholly Breedlove, the Southern couple in The Bluest Eye. I will argue that the failure of the individual to confront his/her own shadow creates a shadow in a spousal relationship that impacts the family and vice versa. I will show how the Breedloves fail to confront the shadow of self-loathing that damages them as a couple and moves to the rest of the family, particularly their daughter Pecola. In stark contrast, Tea Cake and Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God provide a good example of Southern Black couples in the 1940s who confront their shadows and create genuine marital relationships. I will also compare the Southern Pecola to the Northern Claudia MacTeer to show two main ideas: the significance of planting healthy Black concepts into the souls of Black children and the responsibility of the family to plant these concepts in children. If the family fails to confront their shadow, they will produce individuals who just spread hatred to the Black community and derail the advancement of their society. Chapter 4 will explore the shadow side of the self on Southern Black communities in the 1980s through The Salt Eaters (1980) and The Color Purple (1982). Each discusses the issues of Georgia communities in a particular era, and my focus in each examination will be to understand how community change and health is set in motion or accomplished. I will show this by comparing the life experiences of Celie Alphonso and Velma Henry. These novels suggest that trauma negatively impacts individuals, leading to isolation and distance in the community. It is only when the community pulls together to embrace deeply traumatized members that healing can begin. The interconnectedness of the individual and her/his community is a source of strength and hope that can counteract generations of pain, but it is only possible when individuals and families have confronted their own traumas and are able to reach out to others. I will conclude with a discussion of how these novels aim to provide Blacks and other readers with the unique self-awareness that makes us admit the existence of the shadow and challenge our concerns in a more conscious and creative way—a spiritual awakening experience. Moreover, I will show how and why the southern black female writers propose constructing the wholeness of Black individuals to help them integrate Black souls that are far away from the shadow of slavery and how to practice Black spirituality daily by perceiving life as a struggle to grow.