Master of Arts

This thesis attempts to document the range of responses African-American women writers have posited regarding their concerns with history, identity and culture. Black female identity and historical experience are presented as inextricably linked by these writers, and coming to terms with racial and gender history is deemed essential towards constructing tenable black female identities. As a result, this thesis finds that African-American women's works consistently assert the necessity of intellectually and emotionally understanding historical experience to become and remain a fully functional black woman. By doing so, I hope this thesis contributes to the process of documenting the linked strategies of persistence by which African-American women have communicated, written and published. As critical paradigms to explore the salient features of such a writing tradition are still in the process of forming, the specific vocabulary of exploration matters much less than the need to restore forgotten or ignored voices to the human chorus. I hope this thesis contributes a chord.