Black mothers and the national body politic : the narrative positioning of the black maternal body from the civil war period through the present / Andrea Powell Wolfe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wolfe, Andrea Powell.

Contributor:

Bloomsbury (Firm), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American mothers in literature.

African American women in literature.

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

African Americans in literature.

Mothers in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (243 pages) : illustrations

Distribution:

New York : Bloomsbury Publishing (US), 2020.

Place of Publication:

LANHAM : LEXINGTON BOOKS, 2020.

Summary:

Black Mothers and the National Body Politic: The Narrative Positioning of the Black Maternal Body from the Civil War Period through the Present focuses on the struggles and triumphs of black motherhood in six works of narrative prose composed from the Civil War period through the present. Andrea Powell Wolfe examines the functioning of the black maternal body to both define and undermine ideal white womanhood; the physical scarring of the black mother and the reclamation of the black maternal body as a site of subversion and nurturance as well as erotic empowerment; and the construction of oppressive discourses surrounding black female bodies and reproduction and the development of resistance to these types of discourses. These tensions undergird a multifaceted discussion of the narrative positioning of the black maternal body within and in relationship to the national body politic, an inherently exclusionary and restrictive metaphorical entity constructed and socially contracted over time by an already politically empowered citizenry. Ultimately, close analysis of the texts under study suggests that the United States—as a figurative body complete with imagined “parts” that perform separate functions, from intelligence to labor, ingestion to expulsion—has simultaneously used and cast off the black maternal body over the course of centuries.

Contents:

Introduction

The subordination of embodied power : sentimental representations of the black maternal body in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the life of a slave girl

Recuperating the body : Embodiment and reintegration into the black community in Pauline Hopkins's Contending forces and Toni Morrison's Beloved

The narrative power of the lack maternal body : resisting and exceeding visual economies of discipline in Margaret Walker's Jubilee and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose

Mapping black motherhood onto the nation: Southern legacies and national realities in Lillian Smith's Strange fruit and Alice Randall's The wind done gone

Coda : Michelle Obama in context.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-66698-545-7

1-7936-3130-1

OCLC:

1202772392