The Construction of Black Women's Identity from the Perspective of Space: A Case Study of Toni Morrison's Sula

Abstract

Sula is one of the early representative works of Toni Morrison, an African-American female writer. In this work, space is regulated,
suppressed and restricted by the mainstream ideology, which constrains black women. Meanwhile, black women actively explore their identity construction through different practices such as interaction, confrontation and evasion with the limited space. This paper takes the spatial
theory as the framework, regards public space, private space and body space as power areas, and analyzes the identity construction of black
women under the double shackles of racial segregation and gender oppression through spatial practice. By decoding the different spatial metaphors in the text, it explores the different strategies of survival and identity construction of black women under the cultural control of maledominated space.