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In addition to the exploration of the history and existence of African Americans, the works of African American women writers include the unique music, myths, legends, and various plant symbols which involves a myriad of metaphor. Each metaphor condenses the complex historical experience and personal experience of African Americans. Among African American women writers, Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison is undoubtedly one of the most dazzling presence. Her poetic language and innovative plant metaphors artfully recreate the hidden black history and culture, revealing the plight of African Americans in the predominantly white America, while focusing on major issues of race, gender and humanity. Alice Walker advocates an equal relationship between human beings and plants by maintaining that “the birds and animals, flowers and insects of the earth are our brothers and sisters, and together we have the earth the whole of it” (Walker, 2003: 73). Walker here compares plants to the siblings of human beings, endowing the plants with metaphorical meanings. Walker further applies the plants to her novels, and these plants are often associated with the female characters.

The plant metaphors in Morrison’s novel reproduces the fact that the African American people exist as an object subjugated by the ruling class. In Tar Baby, after a fight with his wife Margaret, Valerian Street, the owner of the cottage on Isle des Chevalier, finds that “the Negroes had all gone out of the room, disappeared like bushes, trees, out of his line or vision ...” (Morrison, 1982: 229). Belittling the black slaves to be bushes and trees in the wilderness reflects the racist nature of Valerian, where African American people are already not regarded as human beings. Morrison conveys the white ruling class’s objectification of people of colour through Valerian’s comparison of African American people to trees. Sethe, the heroine of Beloved, has a peculiar tree growing on her back. The tree was made by two nephews of the schoolteacher, a diabolic slave owner, who beats Sethe hard after taking away her milk. Sethe’s companion is marveled at that it was “It’s a tree...

1.2 Plants as Expression of Women’s Creativity

Alice Walker, the dark-skinned “Virginia Woolf”, found herself almost unable to name any female literary pioneer of her race in the continuum of history, for when she looked back at her black mothers and grandmothers, she saw only illiterate women burdened by the severed history. For centuries, black women in America have been physically and emotionally battered and denied the right to education, let alone creating literary works. However, Walker found another way to discover the artistic creativity of African American women as well as the hidden cultural traditions of African American women. In her In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden, Walker asks, “How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years African American people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write? And the freedom to paint, to sculpt本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。