Up the Stairs:A Psycho Socio Matrix of Willa in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills

Abstract

Gloria Naylor, an accomplished writer of African American literature has created a furor in the literary domain through her candid mirroring of African American experience specifically black women in her novels. She, through her spate of characters, unveils the simmering psychological pressures of multiple Black women as they remain the center of her fictional matrix. With unfaltering vision, she is on a mission to shun away and erase the convolutions involved in the life of Black women. This paper is an attempt to disclose how in her second novel Linden Hills, the protagonist Willa’s excavation of the hidden history of Nedeed women, propels her to move in the path to self-assertion and evolution thereby undergoing emotional and psychological reformation.