Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

[Review Of] Lean'tin L. Bracks. Writings On Black Women Of The Diaspora: History, Language, And Identity. Crosscurrents In African American History, Vol I, Helen Lock

Ethnic Studies Review

In her "Preface" to this study, Lean'tin Bracks describes her purpose as being "to describe a model which may provide for today's black woman a means to take control of her destiny by retrieving her Afrocentric legacy from the obscured past" (xi). This model, which she applies through discussions of The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1988), Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982, and Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow (1984), is tripartite: "historical awareness, attention to linguistic pattern, and sensitivity to stereotypes in the dominant culture" (xi).