Abstract
Gloria Naylor’s novel Linden Hills exemplifies the use of Black narrative strategies in motherwork, a condition of learned skills passed down through Afrocentric ideologies of mothering. Living under the ideals of Eurocentric mothering that favor separations of gender roles and the cult of True Womanhood, Black women’s contributions to cultural production have been viewed underneath a lens that forced their voices and perspectives into the margins of silence. However, the lived experienced of Black women, and the discoveries of self-hood unearthed from Black feminist critiques, are reflected in the art Black women create. An art that speaks back in unique, self-defining ways. Naylor uses these reflections as narrative strategies of motherwork to create a new, polyphonic text that aims to create a healing space within the margins and boundaries Black women are pushed toward. In these spaces, Willa Needed and the Needed wives use the motherwork aesthetics of naming names, talking back, and the multi-layered text to reclaim their own self-definition and self-valuation. Ultimately, the longstanding goal of Afrocentric mothering produces in literature an angle of explanation and reconciliation that both commemorates and gives voices to Black women across the ages.