The Intensification of Alterity and Identity in Toni Morrison's Sula

Yssa Désiré KOFFI

Numéro 14 – RILE-2 de 2019 (Deuxième numéro 2019) (2019) Page(s) 104 - 116 ISSN 2076-6130

This paper aims at showing through Toni Morrison’s Sula how black people in the United States have succeeded in creating their own identity. Once in America, their original identity has been called into question through alterity. With the encounter of various cultures and civilizations, they have been so alienated that they have adopted the habits and customs of their new environment giving them arbitrary and fake identities. Going against the distorted images and labels attributed to them, they define their own norms and values from which they assert themselves and construct their specific identities. Key words: Identity, alterity, encounter, culture, self-assertion, images Résumé: Cet article vise à montrer à travers Sula de Toni Morrison comment les Noirs aux États-Unis ont réus 105 regards identity is dotted with social upheaval and dispute. Identity is then seen as being the cause of most of the present world troubles. It is this perspective that Buruma states: “Identity is a bloody business. Relation, nationality or race may not be the primary causes of war and mass murder… But identity is what gets the blood boiling, what makes people do unspeakable things to their neighbors” (Buruma, 2002, 49). White people in the United States inflict suffering, humiliation and dehumanization on Blacks because they don’t have and share the same notion about identity. African-American writers like Toni Morisson go against this clumsy attitude of Whites towards Blacks to restore their identity and give them more dignity. In Sula (1973), Morrison lays a particular str

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Yssa Désiré KOFFI. « The Intensification of Alterity and Identity in Toni Morrison's Sula ». Revue Ivoirienne de Langues Étrangères, Numéro 14, 2019, p. 104. ISSN 2076-6130.