N°021_Vol.2_19

Introduction: The victimization of black women finds its roots in Africa when in the 15^th century, they were taken to America as slaves. That shameful human trade made of tortures and any other forms of ill-treatments destroyed Blacks’ lives in the United States. With that status of slaves, black Americans in general and black women in particular could not expect better treatment as intellectuals wrote: “African Americans are largely the descendants of enslaved people who were brought from their African homelands by force to work in the New World. Their rights were severely limited, and they were long denied a rightful share in the economic, social, and political progress of the United State.”[1] This view on black women’s suffering in America is corroborated by historians such as Daina Ramey Berry who approves:

The origins and early lives of African women who were brought to America are deeply intertwined with the history of the transatlantic slave trade. This forced migration, spanning from their homes and transported across the Atlantic to be sold as slaves. Among these were countless African women whose lives were irrevocably charged by the horrors of slavery. The transatlantic slave trade had a profound impact on Black women, who endured not only the brutal conditions of capture and transport but also the enduring legacy of dehumanization in the New World.[2]

This historical overview is supported by another historian Betty Wood who, in her conclusion, writes: “For many years, regardless of the ethnicity and nationality, their age, and their religious preference, women featured scarcely at all in most scholarly accounts of the transatlantic slave trade and the evolving slave systems of the modern Americas.”[3] This traditional account of the origin of Black American women’s suffering has not escaped the attention of a black American woman writer who believes that the history of African-Americans must be reconstructed and made known  to the whole world.

In this perspective, Toni Morrison, in her literary creation, does not hesitate to enlighten how black women, along with millions of other Africans, became victims of Whites’ wrong perception of them in Africa and in the New World in reference to the history that reveals that: “African-American history started with the forced transportation of Africans to North America in the 16^th centuries. The European colonization of the America, and the resulting Atlantic slave trade, encompasses a large-scale transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic.”[4]

This paper aims at showing the origin of African-American women’s suffering in America following steps of the triangular commerce. It purports to prove not only that Africa is the starting point of black women’s plight in the way it is fictionalized in A Mercy, but also Toni Morrison’s ability to use all necessary materials from the slave trade to create a text that unveil the unspoken source of the African-American women’s difficulties in America. Accordingly, the main question of this critical investigation can be stated as follows: how does Toni Morrison dramatize the genesis of African-American women’s plight in America? The hypotheses backing from this question are: African-American women’s plight did not start in America; African-American women’s suffering is found in the triangular commerce; Black female characters in A Mercy were hunted, captured in Africa and sold to the white; They were chained and put into ships to be transported to America where they experienced hardship.

The methodology used is the choice of the New Historicism which helps to know and understand the beginning of the suffering of African-American women in the New World. I sort out some historical events contextualized to show the interplay that exists between fiction and historical facts knowing that literature is not an isolated artistic creation:

New Historicism emerged as a major critical movement in the late 20^th century. It argues that literature texts are inseparable from the cultural, social, political, and economic conditions of their historical moment. Literature is treated not as an isolated artistic creation but as one of many “texts” circulating within a society’s network of power and ideology.[5]

This paper on the genesis of the plight of African-American women in America reveals the starting point of the Black American women’s suffering which is found in the history of the triangular commerce. It is going to be clarified in three sections.  While the first proves the beginning of black women’s suffering in reference to their experience in Africa, the second section deals with their ill-treatment during the transatlantic crossing. Finally, the last section comes to approve African-American women’s plight in the New World where they experienced slavery, racism, segregation, and discrimination.

• [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/African-Americans
• [2] Daina Ramey, Berry. A Black Women’s History of the United States: Unveiling the Untold Stories of Black Women’s Resilience and Impact. https://www.bookey.app/audiobook/a-black-women-history-of-the-united-states.
• [3] Betty, Wood. Black Women in Early Americas. https://www.cambridge.org/core/search? 
• [4] https://www.bing.com/search?
• [5] https://www.bing.com/search?