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@article{190038,
        author = {Prashant Prakashrao Kadekar and Dr Santosh V Koti},
        title = {Race, Cultural Memory, and Demarginalization in the Selected Novels of Gloria Naylor and Paule Marshall},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {8},
        pages = {697-701},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=190038},
        abstract = {This paper explores the interconnected themes of race, cultural memory, and demarginalization in the selected novels of Gloria Naylor and Paule Marshall, two writers whose works offer profound insights into the lives of Black women within African American and Caribbean diasporic communities. Their fiction vividly portrays racial discrimination, patriarchal dominance, economic precarity, emotional displacement, and historical trauma, yet it also reveals the psychic strength, cultural continuity, and communal intelligence through which women resist erasure and reclaim identity. Drawing upon Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist Standpoint Theory, the study demonstrates that race in these novels is not an abstract sociological term; rather, it shapes everyday movement, emotional well-being, access to opportunities, and the formation of self-image. A comparative reading of Mama Day, Bailey’s Café, and The Men of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor and Brown Girl, Brownstones, Daughters, and The Fisher King by Paule Marshall shows that cultural memory functions as a stabilizing force, offering psychological grounding and ancestral continuity in the face of displacement and marginalization. The paper argues that demarginalization is a sustained process, not a single moment of liberation. It unfolds through storytelling, spiritual engagement, intergenerational bonding, cultural belonging, and critical self-reflection. While Naylor grounds this process within African American communal and spiritual traditions, Marshall frames it within diasporic, transnational, and post-colonial contexts. Despite these differences, both writers imagine Black women as ethical anchors, cultural bearers, and historical witnesses, whose agency disrupts narratives of victimhood. Their works collectively affirm that identity is reconstructed rather than inherited, and that the journey from marginalization to empowerment is deeply connected to memory, culture, and collective resilience.},
        keywords = {},
        month = {January},
        }