Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

172

Date

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Women's and Gender Studies

Concentration

Literature

Committee Chair

Verner Mitchell

Committee Member

Shelby Crosby

Committee Member

Ladrica C Menson-Furr

Abstract

Marita O. Bonner, early twentieth century African American public intellectual and creative writer, wrote particularly about the experiences of blacks in Chicago. Though most Bonner scholarship focuses primarily on her working class female characters, this study provides close readings of the young male figures in the short stories, "One Boy's Story," "The Makin's," "The Whipping," "There Were Three," "Tin Can," and "Nothing New." I analyze how these texts confront notions of family, personal identity, and violence, and how Bonner configures young life as a volatile liminal space of human development. As seen in Bonner's short stories and in her essay "The Young Blood Hungers," she continually promotes childhood and adolescence as compelling and complicated aspects of the American black experience. Youth is an integral category in investigating not only Bonner's works, but in examining the Harlem Renaissance era.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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