Black Women's Sufferings, Resistance to Violence and Insights for Meaningful Life in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
Vu Thi Quynh Dung1, Maria Luisa A. Valdez2
Citation : Vu Thi Quynh Dung, Maria Luisa A. Valdez, Black Women's Sufferings, Resistance to Violence and Insights for Meaningful Life in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature 2019;7(4):1-16.
Philosophers, psychologists, spiritual leaders, as well as researchers have all pondered on the thought of what makes life worth living. Likewise, different people hold diverse viewpoints about meaningful life.For women and girls, a part of a meaningful life is derived from the liberation of their own lives. In developing countries, women's traditional roles are still family-focused with domestic chore, bearing and rearing children, taking care of her household. In addition to those challenges, they are also oppressed with racial discrimination, sexual violence and domestic violence. As a result, many of them struggle to fight against those so as to pursue a better life. Thus, this qualitative study analyzed the insights on pursuit for meaningful life in Toni Morrison's novel titled Song of Solomon pointing out the events and situations which show implications of the themes pursued in the novel to the study of meaningful life among Vietnamese women and girls. Findings of the analysis revealed that Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon depicted the black women's quest for a meaningful life, which is often complicated by the interconnected web of oppression namely racial discrimination, gender inequality, emotional abandonment as well as women's sufferings. Likewise, the novel showed various manners of women's resistance to different forms of violence. Their final goal for such rebellion lies with the hope to confirm their existence as real persons and gain equal rights with men, to call for a change of perception about their role and reconfirm their status. The themes pursued in the work of Toni Morrison are practically significant for the study of meaningful life among Vietnamese women and girls.