Black Aesthetic in literacy expressinon; struggle for justice in the Novels of morrison and Whitehead

Abstract

This study analyzes black novels such as Tony Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019) from the perspective of black aesthetic in order to manifest how these texts underpin social justice in black community. Black people are haunted by past oppression, exploitation and violence making it more difficult for them to have peace mind and get committed to ending the brutal past. This research work aims at justifying how these primary texts are the outcome of blacks' experiences and speak against the injustice upon them. In Beloved, Sethe runs away from the Sweet Home and kills her daughter. In The Underground Railroad, Cora undergoes an arduous journey and in The Nickel Boys Elwood gets nabbed by police and kept in reformatory school. The study focuses on solving the key questions: How do these novels distinctly portraying black aesthetic raise voice against injustice? In addition, it attempts to subsume the specific questions: Why do Sethe and Cora suffer and later decide to escape? What prevents Elwood from being a good boy in Nickel Academy to white authority? To respond to these questions, this study applies theoretical perspectives of black aesthetic envisioned by scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who values art and literature that foster political cause, Larry Neal, for whom ethics and aesthetics are inseparable and stresses on the destruction of white things, white ideas and the white way of looking at the world, and LeRoi Jones, who claims the authenticity of black literature when it deals with the question of freedom. With regard to the insights of these scholars, this study concludes that these texts expound the painful history of black people and motivate them to release themselves from the shackles of racial injustice maintaining their history and heritage in the New World.