Crossing Borders Through Folklore By Alma Jean Bilingslea...

In her book Crossing Borders Through Folklore, Alma Jean Bilingslea-Brown discusses how border crossing trope found in Black American women s writing. Brown claims: The journey across geopolitical, cultural, and Ideological borders constitutes one of the most frequent crossings in black women s fiction. Interpreted at one point as the movement from victimization to consciousness and from division to wholeness, the journey was perceived to be as much personal as psychological as political and social. (13) The purpose of crossing these borders was to change and correct not only the view held by others, but also the view that African Americans, as marginalized people, held of themselves (26). This border crossing in seen in Butler s Kindred as the protagonist, Dana, travels through time and space and lands in the early 1800 s to save her white male ancestor, Rufus. Throughout this journey, Dana is seen struggling with her identity, as she is often told that she seems more white than black. This struggle is compounded as Dana has to interact with other blacks in this time period, and Dana struggles to relate to them and understand why they would choose servitude rather than revolt or running to freedom. While she is in the 1800 s, Dana struggles the most to understand Sarah, the cook and mammy figure in the novel. Character s such as Sarah have historically been represented as Aunt Jemima or mammy figures, who became derogatory images of black women