Towards Understanding Transnational Blackness: A Counteractive Role of Family in 21st Century African American Novel

Abstract

This study investigates the counteractive role of African American families in bringing intercultural modifications to racial discourse, changing race discussion, and opposing racial hierarchies and ethnic destiny by positively socializing race among African American community as portrayed in Toni Morrison's God Help the Child. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the way African American families shape their children's personalities and identities beyond Afro-American victimized status and stereotyped racial barriers as well as instilling the concept of transnational blackness in the community. This study incorporates the concept of transnational blackness as a sub-culturally resistant, counter-hegemonic, and progressive manner of searching beyond African Americans' cultural particularism for a new identity in mainstream nationalism. The qualitative content analysis technique is used to examine the selected text in the light of a theoretical framework developed with reference to postmodernism. The study concludes that African American families socialize race in a positive perspective among family members, which results in decolonizing traditional blackness often associated with a sense of repression and inferiority in the novel.