WHAT CAN STORYTELLING DO FOR/TO A YELLOW WOMAN?THE FUNCTION OF STORYTELLING IN THE PROCESS OF IDENTITY FORMATION OF US MULATTO WOMEN

Abstract

The article critically examines the African American tradition of telling the stories inherited from mothers and grandmothers “the culture-bearing black women.” These stories, as Alice Walker puts it, are “accumulated collective reality, [the] dreams, imagining, rituals and legends” that constitute the “subconscious of the people.” Telling them again and again brings the community together and keeps the culture alive by constantly reaching to its roots and re-visioning its uniqueness. It also frees the history of the nation from the constraints of the dominant culture, creating perspectives for the future outside the homogenous social system. But in the novels discussed in this article the ritualistic acts of storytelling have detrimental effects on the well-being of their protagonists.