토니 모리슨의 ‘기타 어머니’와 ‘기타 아버지’

Toni Morrison’s ‘Other Mother’ and ‘Other Father’: Alternatives to the Collapsed Structure of the African American Family

This study aims to demonstrate that Toni Morrison’s ‘other mother’ and ‘other father’ are alternatives to the collapse of the African American family. The African American families were constantly vulnerable to the surveillance, oppression, and violence of their White owners during slavery, and then to the hard lines of social-economical segregation along the racial colors that continued long after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1864. Therefore, they have unwillingly been torn into matriarchal households or patriarchal households. In this historical process, the dad-space of matriarchal households or the mom-space of patriarchal households has been filled with grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, cousins, and neighbors as ‘other parents.’ Morrison represents other mother and other father in view of the painful history of African Americans. In Beloved which is set in the early days of slavery, Nan, one-handed female slave, is other mother who takes child-care responsibilities for the daughter of her peer who is forced into labour exploitation in the fields. Aunt Rosa in Tar Baby, and Sandler Giblons in Love, which are set in the days as same as our contemporaries, evoke the historical tradition of other parents in the African American culture. Aunt Rosa fills the mom-space of a patriarchal household as a nanny who breast-feeds Son Green. Sandler takes on child-care responsibilities for his grand son, and councils him to have an un-blinded youth dating.