Storytelling and Communal Singing: Effective Forms of Appropriation to Destabilize White Supremacy

Abstract

Community features importantly both in the assertion of Afro-Americans' selfhood and the rehabilitation of their culture once lost in slavery. Toni Morrison believes that appropriation in the form of community storytelling and communal singing within black community is an effective instrument to destabilize white supremacy. This paper examines how community storytelling and communal singing works in Morrison's novel Beloved to rebuild African Americans' communal solidarity and start a discursive practice of cultural reconstruction.