Not your mother's mammy : the Black domestic worker in transatlantic women's media / Tracey L. Walters.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walters, Tracey Lorraine, author.

Contributor:

Smidt Family Modern and Contemporary Art Collection Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women household employees, Black, in art.

Women household employees, Black, in literature.

African American women household employees in art.

African American women household employees in literature.

Arts, Black.

English literature--Black authors--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--Black authors.

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 235 pages, 4 pages of plates : color illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Not Your Mother's Mammy examines how black artists of the African diaspora, many of them former domestics, reconstruct the black female subjectivities of domestics in fiction, film, and visual and performance art. In doing so, they undermine one-dimensional images of black domestics as victims lacking voice and agency and prove domestic workers are more than the aprons they wear. An analysis of selected media by Alice Childress, Nandi Keyi, Victoria Brown, Kara Walker, Mikalene Thomas, Rene Cox, Lynn Nottage, and others provides examples of generations of domestics who challenged their performative roles of subservience by engaging in subversive actions contradicting the image of the deferential black maid. The artists illustrate that through verbal confrontation, mobilization, passive resistance, and performance, black domestics find their voices, exercise their power, and maintain their dignity in the face of humiliation. Not Your Mother's Mammy brings to life stories of domestics often neglected in academic studies, such as the complexity of interracial homoerotic relationships between workers and employers, or the mental health challenges of domestics that lead to depression and suicide. In line with international movements like #MeToo and #timesup, the women in these stories demand to be heard"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Overview: The history of black women's domestic labor from the twentieth century to the present

Let's hear it from the maid : Alice Childress's Like one of the family

Dirty work : the representation of undocumented Caribbean domestic laborers in Nandi Keyi's The true nanny diaries and Victoria Brown's Minding Ben

Forbidden kinship : homoerotic desire between the maid and mistress in Zanele Muholi's Massa & Mina(h)

A sartorial expression of Frenchness in Ousmane Sembène's Le noir de .... : a francophone revision of Jean Genet's The maids

Maid in Hollywood : the art of performance in Theresa Harris's By the way, meet Vera Stark

The art of dressing up in Mary Sibande's Long Live the dead queen

From the margin to the center : the maid in Édouard Manet's Olympia and the politics of recognition in the artwork of Mickalene Thomas and Renée Cox

Kara Walker's "Sugar baby sphinx" : a satirical rendition of the mammy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Smidt Family Modern and Contemporary Art Collection Fund.

ISBN:

9781978808577

1978808577

9781978808584

1978808585

OCLC:

1182851886

Publisher Number:

99987682650