African American Deracination and its Presentation in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Sadie and Maud”
It could be argued that the whole experience of African Americans in the U.S.A. is one of forced and violent deracination. African Americans are doubly, triply, deracinated and without roots. Violently uprooted from Africa, they entered a system of slavery in which, at the whim of their owners, they could be uprooted again and separated from children, lovers and family. In the period following the American Civil War many African –Americans moved north to find work in the north’s industrial cities – thus becoming geographically uprooted yet again. It is no wonder that deracination – the sense of being without real ...
