Representing Double Colonization of Black Women: A Textual Analysis of Homegoing
The research is qualitative because it has analytical and interpretive research design. Qualitative research consists of non-numerical analysis therefore it cannot be generalized so the researcher has analyzed Homegoing to explore the multiple possibilities embedded in the primary text. The research method is Textual Analysis put forward by Catherine Belsey in Gabriel Griffin’s book Research Methods in English Studies. Belsey’s notion that “research is expected to make a contribution to knowledge, it uncovers something new” enables me to analyze text from multiple perspectives which is well suited to the objectives of the research. Belsey is of the view that” textual analysis is indispensable to research in cultural criticism, where cultural criticism includes English, cultural history and cultural studies as well as any other discipline that focuses on text, or seeks to understand the inscription of culture in its artefacts”.
Chapter four. In this chapter the researcher will analyze Homegoing by applying interpretative and exploratory approaches. Analysis will be divided in different sections to represent the calamities inflicted upon women of each generation separately.
The first chapter of the novel covers the life span of Effia. She is a nigger and her suppression at the hands of her own culture is very explicit when there is a talk about her marriage. Marriage is a life changing event for a girl but females in black community are particularly snubbed and are not given any chance to choose a better suit for themselves when there is a marriage going to take place between a black girl Adwoa and a white man, Effia questions this settlement of marriage “why will Adwoa marry this man?” she is answered “because her mother says so”. Effia’s own life is not different she will also will also marry according to the choice of her father who “have bigger plans for her than to live as a white man’s wife. She will marry a man of her village.”
The sad plight of black women in conjugal and filial relationships is also presented in the novel. The wives and daughters on one side are a victim of colonial powers on the other side their own fellow males are also not giving them any proper place in the house. When Effia asks a question from Abeeku about the British she is given sharp eyes from her parents and without understanding a single word of Abeeko she agrees with him because from the looks of her parents she acknowledges that she has not performed her gender role properly because her mother” Baaba practiced silence and preferred the same from Effia.”
Kimberle Crenshaw in her essay Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex describes the intersection of race and sex in the lives of black women which leads them to be suppressed uniquely. Effia comes to know the difference between a common wife and black wife of a white man through the discussion of elder females as she says “They take care of you, oh, these men! It is like they have never been with a woman before. I don’t know what their British wives were doing. I tell you, my husband looked at me like I was water and he was fire, and every night he had to be put out”.
In the first chapter of the novel Effia’ character is also objectified by the social norms and expectations of black culture. A woman is only judged according to her sexual functions. As soon as the girl begins to menstruate and “her breast arrived, two lumps that sprung from her chest, as soft as mango flesh” the men of the society are moved and are seen as in a bid to win her for their sexual gratification.
There is a great difference between relationships between a white male, white woman and white male, black female. White women are not as much submissive in the quenching white males’ sexual lust as black females. This is reinforced in the novel by depicting the married relationship of Effia and James Collins. Gyasi writes “Englishmen call them wenches, not wives. “Wife” was a word reserved for the white women across the Atlantic.” According to Merriam-Webster dictionary the word Wench is having similar meaning of the word prostitute Merriam-Webster. Which means for white men white females were wives and black females were just an object for the fulfillment of their sexual needs.
Colonialism brought with them many miseries of black community. One of these miseries was the use of female body parts of black females as mere objects and they were assigned works according to their physical appearances and sexual functions. Esi‘s daughter Ness is also subjected to such agonies because she is having powerful sexual appeal from her appearance and therefore is put into household slavery instead of cotton picking. In the house of white man, only those black female slaves were inducted who could perform dual task, performing household chores and full filling their masters’ sexual needs. The white wives of these masters were aware of this fact as Gyasi writes “If Susan was like any of the other masters’ wives, she must have known that her husband’s bringing a new nigger into the house meant she had better pay attention. In this and every other southern county, men’s eyes, and other body parts, had been known to wander”. Later on, when Tom Allen comes to know the scars on her body, he sends her immediately to the fields considering her unfit for house slave.
