Homosexuality and Racial Discrimination

A comprehensive literary study examining how African American literature portrays struggles with racism, sexism, intersectionality, gender, sexuality, and identity, focusing on works by Alice Walker (The Color Purple), Toni Morrison (Beloved), Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain), and Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man). Each novel is analyzed for its portrayal of characters-often Black women or marginalized men-who overcome social, racial, and gender-based oppression through self-discovery, solidarity, and resistance. Walker's The Color Purple traces Celie's growth from abuse to empowerment via womanist sisterhood; Morrison's Beloved explores the psychological trauma of slavery and the healing power of confronting the past; Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God follows Janie's search for love, selfhood, and independence against patriarchal and racial constraints; Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain reveals conflicts between religion between religion, family, sexuality, and self-acceptance; and Ellison's Invisible Man considers the alienation, invisibility, and racial politics facing a young Black man in mid-20th-century America.