Listening Past the Lies that Make Us Sick: A Voice-Centered Analysis of Strength and Depression among Black Women

Abstract

An emerging feminist paradigm likens depression to silencing, as women disconnect from important aspects of their realities in an attempt to meet cultural standards of feminine goodness. While offering a provocative re-evaluation of hegemonic feminine norms and depressive episodes, little in this literature explores connections between silencing and depression within other, non-white constructions of feminine goodness. Employing a voice-centered method that illuminates areas of conflict between cultural scripts and individual meaning making, I forward that being strong is both the depiction of Black feminine goodness and an important contributor to depressive episodes. Drawing on interview data from a nonclinical sample of 58 Black women, I illustrate three depression-relevant aspects of Black women’s gendered experiences: the promotion of their stoicism, silence, and selflessness through the prevailing discourse of the “strong Black woman”; the active suppression of discourse-discrepant realities which the women associate with depressive experiences; and the psychological healing attendant on supplanting this discourse with experience-based knowledge of their social realities. Voice-centeredness, I conclude, brings a needed sensitivity to depression as a racialized and gendered experience of distress tied to the normative conditions of Black women’s lives.