Ilham Habeeb Ward, Dr. Zohre Taebi, & Dr. Azra Ghandeharion
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Reading the autobiography of notable black writers from their own historical perspectives, it has been proved that their frequent themes were the issues of social justice and feminism as the most recurrent themes of any black feminist’s autobiography. Black women writers have been mostly obsessed with voicing what establishes a black woman’s reality. The literature of the black women was invisible till recently, which signifies the truth about a suppressed society. Thus, their literature reflects the truth of black women as the society’s ”other”. As one of the greatest contemporary African-American writers, Angelou’s literary works are also considered as attempts to portray her victory over many difficult social hindrances. These themes all have made this writer’s fiction related with the feminist literary movement. This study seeks to analyze Gather together in my Name as Angelou’s second autobiographical fiction from a black feminism approach. It lays especial focus on the viewpoints of Patricia Hill Collins. She has been selected as this paper’s main theorist because her critical analysis of black feminism has traced the historical subjugation of black women. She has also discussed why love, family, the church, the school (education), the community, freedom fighting, and racial solidarity are so important to black people. Finally, it will be concluded that, as Collins has asserted, fighting to gain freedom and social justice for the entire black community was, in fact, fighting to gain one’s own personal freedom. It is because these two are not detached.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Ahwaz.
