Abstract: While the female sexual economy is powerfully at work in the stories by Beattie, Bloom, and Moore, elsewhere it seems to disappear. Those three stories portray mother-daughter relationships in which either mothers or daughters can find sexual expression, but not both at the same time. In Gloria Naylor's "Kiswana Browne," on the other hand, both mother and daughter enjoy a sense of sexual fulfillment, a commonality that actually helps to bring the characters together by the end of the story. In the course of the story, readers witness the conflict between twentysomething Kiswana and her mother as she moves into her first apartment and looks for her first job. Although mother and daughter disagree on several issues—the suitability of Kiswana's apartment, her choice to forego phone service, her decorating choices, and, most importantly, her decision to renounce her given name, Melanie, for the African Kiswana—the story ends not with conflict but with a sense of mutual understanding. The key to the ceasefire between them is Kiswana's recognition that both she and her mother have lovers who find erotic delight in painted toenails. Rather than constraining the characters so that either mother or daughter can find sexual satisfaction, this story not only allows both women to express themselves sexually, but it even celebrates their parallel sexual experiences.1 KeywordsWhite WomanRacial IdentitySexual ExpressionJewish WomanWhite MotherThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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