Monstrous work and radical satisfaction : Black women writing under segregation / Eve Dunbar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dunbar, Eve, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

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

African American women in literature.

Segregation in literature.

African American women--Intellectual life--20th century.

African American women.

African Americans--Intellectual life--20th century.

African Americans.

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

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 188 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction offers new and insightful readings of African American women's writings in the 1930s-1950s, illustrating these writers' radical resistance to the false and incomplete promise of liberal racial integration. Eve Dunbar examines the writings of Ann Petry, Dorothy West, Alice Childress, and Gwendolyn Brooks to show how these women explored self-fulfillment over normative and sanctioned models of national belonging. Paying close attention to literary moments of disruption, miscommunication, or confusion rather than ease, assimilation, or mutual understanding around race and gender, Dunbar tracks these writers' dissatisfaction with American race relations. She shows how Petry, West, Childress, and Brooks redeploy the idea of monstrous work to offer potential modalities for registering Black women's capacity to locate satisfaction within the domestic and interpersonal. While racial integration may satisfy the national idea of equality and inclusion, it has not met the long-term needs of Black people's quest for equity. Dunbar responds, demonstrating how these mid-century women offer new blueprints for Black life by creating narrative models for radical satisfaction: Black women's completeness, joy, and happiness outside the bounds of normative racial inclusion"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction. The radical satisfaction of Black women's monstrous work

Ugly work : alterity and the "ugly work" of Black life

Home work : Black domestic liberation

Domestic work : dangerous workers and Black sociality

Line work : human-nonhuman crossings and new routes to Black satisfaction

Coda. The revenant.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-176) and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1452972397

9781452972381

1452972389

9781452972398

OCLC:

1455427296