Revivification of Ghost- Goddess tales: Exploring Cultural Haunting and Spirituality in Minority American Fiction

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine minority American writers Ana Castillo and Toni Morrison’s
novels, exploring their interest in supernatural phenomena, their aesthetics and choice of portrayal
of ghosts, sometimes evolving as spiritual goddesses, through the lens of the Brogan’s Theory of
Cultural Haunting. They manage to depict their characters as not just dwelling on the atrocities in
their ethnic pasts, but ones thwarting the current patriarchal paradigm, and investigating and opting
for various ways of survival in the contemporary world , while battling to construct a practical
option in contrast to their intangibility inside the existing predominant culture. For this reason, I
will dissect the novels So far from God and Beloved, also calling to attention the supernatural
element’s effect on the remainder of the characters, on both individual and aggregate levels, and its
relationship with the Ethnic American community. The paper hopes to elaborate on the ways in
which Castillo and Morrison develop their ghost characters not just to reminiscence about the
traumatic oppressions and the stigma of slavery of the past , but they also appropriate the feminine
in their use of spirituality to empower their characters ,delving into their pasts and ending up
reformulating a better future .This study hopes to advance further interest in similar comparative
analyses of minority literary works exploring other forms of spirituality in the fantastical realm
and the relevance of its use .