Black Female Body Research Articles

Thick Black women and misogynoir in the Caribbean

ABSTRACT It is well documented that thick Black female bodies are idealized in Afro-Caribbean communities. However, there is also a long and deep history of oppression of thick Black women in Caribbean spaces based on their race, gender, and body shape and size, which continues to inform the lives of thick Black women in postcolonial Caribbean societies. This paper is an exploratory, grounded analysis of thick Black women’s quotidian experiences in this dialectic, explicitly focusing on Jamaica. Using Caribbean research methodologies situated in decolonial feminist epistemologies, I explore the everyday realities of voluptuous Black women who have to negotiate white Eurocentric body discourses in contemporary Jamaican society. The study foregrounds the voices of thick Black women as they articulate their own lived realities with navigating ‘misogynoir’ in Jamaican public spaces.

Critical Race Theory in Literature: In The Blood By Suzan-Lori Parks

This study seeks to explore the fundamental principles of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and to use it as an analytical tool in order to discuss Suzan-Lori Parks’s play, In The Blood. Through the key tenets of CRT such as the systematic racism, race as a social construct, intersectionality and power structures, it is framed a comprehensive theoretical background for a literary analysis. Relatedly, the primary focus of this study is to deeply analyze race, gender, power relations and socio-economic conditions with CRT through the playwright’s innovative representation of blackness. CRT clearly shows that racism is constructed through discriminative practices and sustained by law and institutions resulting in justification and accordingly normalization of oppression. In line with CRT’s main concerns, In The Blood embodies societal and ideological barriers and the dehumanization of black female bodies through social judgment, racial and gender discrimination, and motherhood. CRT essentially deals with how Parks reconstructs traditional narratives of guilt, shame, and femininity and claims that Hester is portrayed both as a victim of intersectional oppression and an individual struggling with the harsh conditions of life.

Healing: Reflections on My Identity as a Black Female Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT Black feminist survivors and advocates of sexual violence have been integral in recognizing their intersecting identity, using their voice and stories to enlighten society and to reinforce the importance of visibility and inclusion in the sexual violence research, prevention, intervention, and treatment. Despite the historical and present-day sexual violence against the Black female body, this population continues to find ways to heal and overcome the attack on her personhood. This article highlights the identities, unique needs, and considerations of the Black female survivor of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) in relation to the racism, sexism, and overarching oppression that are often added layers for this population. This article also explores the personal narrative of a Black female survivor of CSA, the discovery of self, and an encouragement to speak ones’ truth after victimization, into survival, and beyond. The article concludes with a focus on the significance of the Black female survivors’ reconnection to culture and the ancestors as a tool for healing.

Migration, Human Trafficking, Sexploitation and Trauma in Amma Darko’s Beyond The Horizon

Human trafficking and sexploitation have become prevalent migration configurations in Africa that often plunges the victims into harrowing mental, emotional, and physical trauma. This paper aims at portraying African female immigrants’ experiences in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon projecting the female migrant characters as victims of human trafficking, sexual abuse, and economic exploitation in the hands of their selfish and egoistic husbands. Given the complexities of the lives of African women who immigrate to Europe and get caught in a spider’s web of prostitution and pornography, the fictionalized German universe in the text reveals that Europe is not the “Eldorado” where milk and honey flows in abundance as perceived by most Africans. The paper’s analysis employs a feminist analytical framework to examine the objectification and commodification of the black female body. It submits that, despite their traumatic experiences, these African immigrant women assert their sexuality by challenging the status quo thereby obtaining for themselves an emancipated female agency that allows them to take control of their own bodies as well as their financial gains.

UMA PROPOSTA PEDAGÓGICA CRÍTICA E INCLUSIVA NO ENSINO MÉDIO: o romance ‘O Alegre Canto da Perdiz’, de Paulina Chiziane, e suas possíveis abordagens para o ensino da Literatura Africana

This article aims to present a pedagogical proposal for High School, through the approach of teaching African literature, focusing on the work "The Merry Song of the Partridge" (CHIZIANE, 2008). The need to expand literature education seeks to promote an approach that goes beyond the Eurocentric paradigm, exploring African literature as a way to enrich students' cultural repertoire, including the development of critical and reflective awareness among learners. The article mentions the inclusion of African literature in the school curriculum, emphasizing the importance of Law 10.639/2003 in this regard, which mandates the teaching of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture. Additionally, it discusses the most recent document guiding and standardizing education: the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC, 2019), which addresses the need to rethink how literature is taught in school, aiming to make reading and writing enjoyable activities for students. The proposed methodology involves collective reading of the work, followed by group discussion; historical and social contextualization of the novel's plot, and reflection on themes such as the sexualization of the black female body, whitening, and identity. This pedagogical proposal aims to promote a more inclusive and diversified education, providing high school students with a critical experience regarding African literature

Correction to ‘“I'm very hurt”: (Un)justly reading the Black female body as text in a racial literacy learning assemblage’

Correction to ‘“I'm very hurt”: (Un)justly reading the Black female body as text in a racial literacy learning assemblage’

A MULHER NEGRA E O DIREITO

This article aims to critically reflect on the concept of "Subject of Law". It focuses on race, gender and class and seeks to understand how these intersectionalities are determinant in the distribution of punitivism within the criminal justice system. The study reveals that black women arrested in flagrante, who are subsequently held in pre-trial detention for drug trafficking, are more penalized by the criminal system in place. This is explicitly selective, racist and stigmatizing. The standard procedures and reasoning employed in custody hearings and decisions are real instruments of repression against these women. Therefore, black women experience their own regime of subalternization, which is not contemplated by white Eurocentric feminism, nor by the universalist and positivist formulations of Law and its concept of "Subject". It is necessary to question not only how the law is operated and who operates it, but the entire construction of this constitutional guarantee regime, built on the colonial epistemic aegis that excludes the experiences of black female bodies. In this sense, this article aims to reflect these vulnerabilities from decolonial and intersectional theories as a way of thinking critically about law.

“No wrong way to be a woman”: media coverage of Serena Williams as a mother

ABSTRACT This study interrogates media representations of tennis player Serena Williams during the five-month period between her first official match and her first Grand Slam tournament after giving birth. Grounded in literature on coverage of Black athletes, athlete mothers, and Black mothers, a qualitative critical discourse analysis of news articles (n = 61) between December 17 and June 2018 shows that Williams received mostly positive media coverage upon her return to the professional tour. In contrast to previous representations of Williams as “Other” in tennis on account of her position as a Black woman, journalists afforded Williams some of the framing benefits usually exclusive to white athletes and mothers. This study advances academic literature on the intersections of race and gender in sport and (Black) athlete motherhood by demonstrating how motherhood has altered representations of Serena Williams’s race and gender in media coverage, subverting traditional representations of her Black female body but emphasizing hegemonic ideals of (white) motherhood.

Being “Woman” and Zimbabwean in Zimbabwe: Reading the (Un)Mournable Bodies in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body

There is a growing interest in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s last sequel that critiques Zimbabwe as a failed state. In this article, I analyse the representation of black female bodies in postcolonial/neoliberal Zimbabwe. My argument centres on the effects of the second-person narrative perspective and explores how this narrative perspective as Dangarembga’s preferred storytelling method recalibrates with the idea of shared urgency in Zimbabwe. In my reading, I argue that the narrative perspective prioritises the idea of being humane as a need to re-make Zimbabwe’s homeliness, particularly for “women.” In this way, I explore Dangarembga’s other modes of being human/woman that identify with the concept of unhu/ubuntu. I argue that the idea of being humane, or a new world-sensing, and the narrative strategy create urgency in being Zimbabwean, and being a “woman” in Zimbabwe. I argue that Dangarembga’s writing about pain, betrayal, and false hopes in This Mournable Body is her way of simultaneously writing against the Empire and neoliberal Zimbabwe—a way of pushing back and resisting Zimbabwe’s sociopolitical and patriarchal capitalistic order.

Dark Persistence: Black College Women's COVID-19 Photo Essays.

Guided by intersectional multimodal literacy frameworks and analytic methods, this qualitative study explored how seven high-achieving Black undergraduate women's photo essays visually and textually represented their persistence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo essays, in this context, are intersectional multimodal compositions that use images and words to articulate the challenges that the women faced during COVID-19 and the resources that promoted their persistence. Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, the women's digital photo essays, and lengthy photo-elicitation interviews with the women on Zoom. Findings reveal that the women's photo essays evoked an endarkened persistence, rooted in the legacy of Black people's collective struggle and survival, and represented by two interrelated themes: Affirming Black Beauty (i.e., Embracing natural Black hair and Caring for Black female bodies) and Honoring the Spirit (i.e., (Re)connecting with sistafriends, (Re)claiming rest, and Nurturing creativity). Research and practical implications are discussed.

Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay by Kelly McWilliams

Reviewed by: Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay by Kelly McWilliams Quinita Balderson McWilliams, Kelly Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay. Little, 2023 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780316449939 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780316450133 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 8-12 Harriet and her parents worked hard to transform the former Louisiana plantation, Westwood, into an enslaved people's museum, but since her mother died of cancer, Harriet worries if she can continue her mom's dream of fighting racism through education. She lacks patience for bigots, her grief turning her into—in her own words—a rage monster when dealing with entitled white people, be it visitors to the museum who were expecting antebellum charm or a history teacher who kicks her out of class after she calls him out on a racist assumption. When Claudia Hartwell, a wealthy white woman, purchases the neighboring property to host a celebrity plantation-style wedding and then Harriet's high school floats the idea of having prom on site, Harriet struggles to make sense of it all. She finds an unlikely ally in Layla Hartwell, who is pleased to help if it means thwarting her mother's racist developments. McWilliams stuns with this well-told, honest story that peels apart the legacy of slavery to examine the undeniable connection from past horrors and trauma to present oppression and violence, in obvious and less obvious forms. The disregard of the Black female body, for example, is seen both in a story of a young slave who was sold as a breeder, and in Harriet's mother, whose cancer would have been treated earlier had the doctors took a Black woman's pain seriously and not assumed she was an addict. Harriet is brash, loving, and thoroughly messed up (for plenty of understandable reasons), but she's also made the wise choice to be in therapy, giving a refreshing take on the value of asking for help in an era of bootstraps and stigmatized psychology. As she gains the tools to deal with her grief, rage, and disappointment, Harriet learns the value of curbing ignorance without shouldering its heavy burden, even as lingering racism trots on. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Reproductive slavery: Historical and present-day discussions of the Black female body as a condition of confinement

From history to present day, various territories have utilized both socio-political systems and compulsory powers to place restrictions on reproductive information, healthcare, supplies, procedures, and services pertaining to birth control, sterilization, emergency contraception, and abortion. Quintessentially, these restrictions have uniquely impacted African American women, limiting reproduction for some, and mandating it others. This article takes a comparative historical approach and examines reproductive slavery in the United States during the Atlantic Slave Trade (1619–1865), as well as reproductive restrictions implemented over the last fifty years (1970–2022). This article asserts that the events and policies that occurred in the latter era are an extension of colonial reproductive slavery. Further, this article includes a discussion on the critical importance of intersectional feminist perspectives in discussions of reproductive policies, bodily autonomy, and labor markets.

Commodification of the Black Female Body

The legal institution of chattel slavery has demonstrated commodity fetishization of the Black female body. White Englishmen have, throughout history, utilized Marx’s doctrine to codify the existence of African American women as sexual property for their pleasure. Furthermore, commodity fetishism explains the racism and white superiority that white Englishmen were able to uphold over their enslaved counterparts. African American women were vulnerable to dehumanization, sexual exploitation, premature violence, and rape. Slavery was intended to systematically oppress African American females in appropriating blackness through the transformation of enslaved African American women into forms of capital, which has become an ideological foundation in slave regimes. As these regimes further developed, the commodification of African American females has increased.

“Triple use” of black female bodies: gender, race, abuse and slavery - Rio de Janeiro, 19th century

Resumo: Apresentamos neste artigo reflexões acerca dos diferentes significados desenvolvidos na sociedade escravista do século XIX, sobre mulheres africanas e suas descendentes, e o convívio cotidiano com a tríplice significação de seus corpos e de suas identidades, posto serem elas produtos, produtoras e reprodutoras da e para a sociedade escravocrata do Rio de Janeiro. Nesse sentido, pequenas margens cotidianas foram importantes para ações, escolhas e agências. No embate cotidiano, aquelas mulheres ressignificaram laços de solidariedade, de amizade e familiares, sob o impacto da violência em seus corpos - física, moral e psicológica -, não sem resistências. Para tanto, mobilizamos as categorias de gênero, raça e escravidão para analisar manuais de médicos e de fazendeiros, inventários post mortem, teses médicas e jornais, ao perscrutarmos o corpo feminino escravizado e as diferentes violências a ele impostas.

The Crucible

The Crucible

To Be is to Dream is to Be Free

Malone talks back to the legacy of exploitation of Black slave labor and the system of racial subjugation and sexual political economy that places demands on the Black female body, themes that are found in Alison Saar’s artwork entitled Cotton Eater II (2014).

Art for People's Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975 by Rebecca Zorach

Art for People's Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975 by Rebecca Zorach

Fat Asses, Weight Gain, and the White Feminine Commodification (Contortion) of Black Female Bounty

This short performative essay reflects on the author’s Black mother teaching him about cultural critique, particularly as this relates to the social construction of the Black female body. The author structures his reflections and lessons learned through the construct of fat asses, weight gain, and the White feminine commodification (contortion) of Black female bounty. He uses contemporary exemplars to reinforce aspects of his mother’s lived experience as a Black woman with a full body.

A Black Feminist Study of Religion: Inheriting Victor Anderson’s Black Religious and Cultural Criticism

ABSTRACT In this article, I outline what Kristie Dotson refers to as an “inheritance map” for the epistemological insights and critical moves in Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (1995). I establish that Beyond Ontological Blackness represents what Stuart Hall calls a significant break – “where old lines of thought are disrupted, older constellations displaced, and elements, old and new, are regrouped around a different set of premises and themes” 1 1 Hall, “Cultural Studies." – and thusly, a new direction in the study of black 2 2 In my current writing projects (post 2019) I use Black (rather than black) and white for political reasons. Full stop. I deploy a “b” when engaging oppression, however. Still, making distinctions in this essay between what should have a “B” (for example, Black women, church, students, presence, subject, religion, experience, etc.) and what should have a “b” (for example, antiblack, ontological blackness, symbolic blackness, black heroic cultural genius, black crisis, etc.) proved extremely difficult. Most challenging was turning my powerful “B” into a “b” throughout for clarity and consistency. religion and theology 3 3 This is not slippage. I distinguish between black theology and the study of black religion at length in Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018). : black religion and culture studies. The latter of which makes room for a black feminist study of religion.

“Mind Is Revealed in the Countenance”: Subversive Laughter and Caricature in The Woman of Colour

Throughout The Woman of Colour (1808), Olivia Fairfield, the Black mixed-race heroine, ridicules the “fair sex” bodies of white female characters who irrationally judge the heroine as inferior because of the colour of her skin. In this article, I extend Lyndon J. Dominique’s reading of Olivia’s subversive gaze and laughter found in Imoinda’s Shade (2012). In building on Dominique’s insights, I show how Olivia paradoxically uses caricatural tropes of fat versus thin and young versus old to envision caricature on her own terms: to challenge and resist anti-Black stereotypes. When the novel is examined within the context of contemporary visual caricatures that depict the Black female body as grotesque, one recognizes that Olivia’s defensive use of verbal caricature is a rhetorically strategic attempt to challenge England’s racial hierarchy, by reaffirming her own femininity and “fairness.”