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영어

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Black woman’s empowerment in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015). Kimberlé Crenshaw coins the term “intersectionality,” referring to particular forms of multi-faceted oppression towards Black women in the U.S. Patricia Hill Collins advances Crenshaw’s concept in order to describe how concretely these intersecting oppressions are organized. Since they are diversely situated in structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power, Black women undergo intersecting oppressions of identity politics such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation. In God help the Child, Bride, a Black heroine, suffers intersectional oppressions such as racism, colorism and child abuse. Endeavoring to achieve self-definition in her life, Bride, the active and positive Black woman, does not refuse to face problems. Bride achieves her self-definition in the process of searching her broken lover, Booker. In that journey, she realizes complete self-definition, which includes self-reliance, independence, as well as the respect of self and others by interacting with White couple, Rain and Booker. Exemplified by Bride, Morrison illustrates how important it is for a Black woman to empower through Collins’s concept of self-definition.