Morrison’s Black Feminist Discourse in A Mercy

Abstract

A Mercy is Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s ninth novel. As a writer and black feminist, Morrison devotes her career to give voice to the silenced, to make the unspeakable things speak and to be heard. She challenged the conventional values imposed on black women by presenting various female characters in her novels. Black women suffer from double oppression, both from gender and race. Through her writings, Morrison endowed black women ways of expressing their pains and sufferings. By releasing their painful past, they can gain their identity and subjectivity. They can finally rebuild and shape themselves. This article explores the black feminist discourse in her novel A Mercy.