Locating Female Transgression against Heteronormative Society: A Comparative Study of Three African American Novels

Abstract

The study attempts to locate female transgressions against a racist and homophobic society as portrayed by Ann Allen Shockley, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor in their novels Loving Her (1974), The Color Purple (1982) and The Women of Brewster Place (1983), respectively. It applies the content-analysis method, lesbian feminist theory and intersectionality to explore the black women characters’ defiance of hetero-patriarchal culture. The novelists effectively challenge heterosexism, and advocate women’s solidarity and lesbian sexuality as acts of resistance to regulative sexual norms. The theoretical tools compare and analyse how different categorisations of race and sex are interwoven in the novels and how their intersection hinders lesbian relations and women’s solidarity. The commonality of the black lesbian characters lies in their experience of sexualised aggression as well as racial otherness. Walker’s characters, unlike Shockley’s and Naylor’s, powerfully threaten sexist, racist and homophobic society and promote universal sisterhood.