Samantha Sullivan |
School: Alcorn State University
Major: English Literature Mentor: Dr. Annette Trefzer Expected Graduation Date: May 2005 Honors and Organizations:
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ABSTRACT
Interracial Friendships Between Women: A Study of Ellen Douglas’s Can’t Quit You, Baby and Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose
| There are two novels, Ellen Douglas’s Can’t Quit You, Baby and Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose that seem to show the reality about the true relationships between black women and their white employers and how they must overcome stereotypes and racial prejudgments. What I am analyzing is the long standing historical and social relationship between black and white women as documented in these two novels. I am searching for answers, on a scholarly, as well as on a personal level, to questions such as “what boundaries existed between black and white women in the past? Have these boundaries disappeared? Can I, as a white woman in the twenty first century, be friends with a black woman?” This essay will search for meaning in the growth and development of four characters, two white and two black women, destined to change the way society thinks bout the past, present, and future relationships between black and white women. Communication, living environments, and a patriarchal presence are some of the most important boundaries that keep the women in these novels from fully getting to know each other like they should. |