Naming and a Black Woman's Aesthetic

Unlike that of most modern and post-modern writers, the fiction of Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker lacks “meaningful names.” This is contrary to expectations; we would expect names, like those in the fiction of Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, and Toni Cade Bambara, that either claim black or matrilinear power or protest against black women's double unempowerment in a white, patriarchal society. However, opaque names in the fiction of Hurston and Walker may be seen as resisting colonization and/or penetration by a critical analysis that appropriates or transfixes their meanings by a white, patriarchal methodology.