Feminist literary criticism has paid close attention to maternal discourse, or the representation of motherhood from the mother's point of view. In literary works with maternal characters, mothers have tended to be silent---depicted from their children's points of view---but maternal voices are increasing in number and many of them come from non-white ethnic authors.;This study focuses on the significance of maternal discourse in the works of three contemporary American ethnic female authors, namely Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Focusing on Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, Morrison's Paradise, and Silko's Almanac of the Dead, I analyze why and how these authors use maternal discourse.;Tripmaster Monkey presents eloquently self-assertive mothers and refers to Chinese and Western literary works that also have important maternal characters. Moreover, the novel as a whole is structured around Kuan Yin, a maternal goddess, who is an omnipresent narrator. Paradise has multiple maternal discourses told by racially and culturally diverse female characters. It presents maternal authority based on Afro-Brazilian religion as well as on Christianity. Almanac of the Dead also depicts eloquent and powerful mother figures. It uses the image of Mother Earth in order to legitimize maternal authority and also to present a vision that unifies multi-ethnic and multi-cultural peoples.;These three contemporary authors rely on religious maternal figures to give authority to maternal voices and to unify the multi-cultural and complex realities that they depict, while avoiding stereotypical images of goddesses as symbols of fertility and nurturing. By using a female divine as a unifying figure, these authors have created a new narrative strategy that allows maternal voices to present themselves fluently and with authority.
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