The Influence of Cultural Background to the Psychosocial Development of the Main Character in Asali Solomon’s Disgruntled

This research paper discusses the influence of cultural background to the psychosocial development of Kenya Curtis as the main character in Asali Solomon’s novel Disgruntled. The purposes of this study are to analyze main character’s cultural background, the stage of development as influenced by such cultural background, and the effects of the psychosocial development itself. The writer employs library research as the method of data collection, while the psychological approach is used as the research approach, specifically by using Erik H. Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development theory. The results indicate that Kenya is an African-American girl with conservative, Afrocentric cultural background. As she undergoes the school age stage of psychosocial development, the cultural discrepancy between her and her peers lead to the negative effect in form of her sense of inferiority. This finding affirms the interlinked relationship between cultural background and one’s psychosocial development.