Characteristics of Postmodernism In The Select Works of Gloria Naylor

Abstract

Abstract

Modernism which reflects a shift in knowledge and understanding and sensibility and expression is a conscious break with some of the bases, and it has been often applied to the literature and arts of the early twentieth century. Postmodernism, a continuation of modernism and sometimes the counter traditional experiments of modernism, is often applied to the literature and arts published after World War II. When Modernism searched for an abstract truth of life, postmodernism propagated that there is no universal truth of life. Postmodernism is the right lens to view the works that discuss the complexities of man with his society, religion and also with himself. Gloria Naylor, an acclaimed novelist of African American Literature, has taken daring efforts to depict the precise picture of her society and women. The present paper takes up Gloria Naylor’s four novels The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988) and Bailey’s Caf? (1992) for its analysis to state that Gloria Naylor has executed ingenious approaches in her plot construction, narration and characterization by using post modernistic tools to present the factual state of the African American society.