Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Chapter VIII

“Speak up, Ike, an ‘Spress Yo’se‘f”

Sentimental Romance Revisited in Ntozake Shange’s

Betsey Brown

Our humanity has been so little explored and so little made available to us through art that sometimes we doubt it ourselves and live one-dimensional lives because that’s all we imagine can be possible. Literature, if it does nothing else, should stimulate one’s imaginary to know that there is more—maybe not more ‘out there,’ but more inside of us that we can use for our own survival (Shange, in Lester 1990, 730).

The Bildungsroman may be particularly attractive for women writers not only because of its focus on becoming, on individuality as malleable rather than fixed, but also because its conventions foreground the dialectical interactions of the individual and society in a manner also characterizing much feminist theory about the interplay of personal experience and socio-cultural formations (Boesenberg 1999, 6).

A Feminist Leitmotif: “Coming of Age”

Sentimental Romance: “Consummated Rights of Families”

“Happily Ever After:” Domestic Settings

“Taking in the World:” Out of the Family Cocoon

The Female Quest: “Paving the Way”

The Passing-for-White Plot: “Talking Out the Sides of Her Mouth”