Young Black Woman Research Articles

Fragmentation of Identities: Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro

Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) is an Obie winning play penned by a prolific writer, Adrienne Kennedy. Premiered at the 4th Street Theatre in New York City, the play has earned significant recognition for its innovative approach and poignant exploration of racial and psychological themes. The play was awarded with an Obie for Best New American Play in 1965, marking a significant milestone in Kennedy’s career and in the landscape of American Drama. Set against the backdrop of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the play reflects the era’s racial tensions and societal pressures. The play follows Sarah, a young black woman struggling with a fractured identity. Through a series of disjointed scenes and dialogues, Sarah adopts multiple personas that represent different facets of her racial, cultural, and psychological self. This paper aims to analyze Sarah’s identity by exploring the symbolism of each persona and the impact of her parents. This paper argues that Sarah’s personas are not arbitrary but represent her profound psychological conflict and the impossibility of reconciling disparate aspects of her identity.

Black Woman Insighting Future Vision: Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb as a Site of Liberatory Knowledge Production

ABSTRACT Situating a poetry performance as a form of autoperformance, I analyze the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Amanda Gorman’s 2021 Presidential inaugural poem, The Hill We Climb, to discuss the poet’s subjectivity as a young Black woman who invites her audience to be active agents for social change and pursuers of positive peace. I position Gorman’s poem as a narrative, containing life-giving ideologies including Afrocentricity, Black Feminist Thought/Black Feminist Rhetoric, and Coalition Building, capable of calling her audience into being the protagonists to bring about a liberatory future that recognizes their individual agency as Americans.

Becoming spectacle and performing back: a Black disabled woman’s performance practices on TikTok

ABSTRACT This paper discusses a young Black disabled woman’s performance practices on TikTok through the lens of critical digital labor studies, disability studies, and Black feminist writings. Starting from the observation that this woman, whom I call Kyla in the paper, deliberately stages her disability – an amputated leg – on TikTok, not least to prove that this can make her an ‘influencer,’ I analyze how Kyla engages her amputated/prosthetic leg in TikTok dance content, how she navigates the attention she receives in reaction to this, including some people’s ableist call for ‘story time,’ in which she is supposed to tell the story of ‘what happened to her leg,’ and, finally, how she ‘performs back’ at her audience, society at large, and TikTok itself through producing performative content that reveals and problematizes what it means for her, as a young Black disabled woman, to produce content on TikTok and live with a disability in the US today. Building upon this analysis, I argue that Kyla’s content production practices critically and creatively engage the fine line between the possibility of disability entrepreneurialism and disability resistance on TikTok and thus effectively ‘crip' the platform.

Secondary syphilis presenting with alopecia and leukoderma in a stable HIV-positive patient in a resource-limited setting: a case report

BackgroundSyphilis is an infection caused by the bacteria Treponema pallidum. It is mainly transmitted through oral, vaginal and anal sex, in pregnancy and through blood transfusion. Syphilis develops in primary, secondary, latent and tertiary stages and presents with different clinical features at each stage. Infected patients can remain asymptomatic for several years and, without treatment, can, in extreme cases, manifest as damage in several organs and tissues, including the brain, nervous tissue, eyes, ear and soft tissues. In countries with a high human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) burden, syphilis increases the risk of HIV infections. We report the case of a young HIV-positive black woman who presented with alopecia and hypopigmentation as features of secondary syphilis.Case presentationA virologically suppressed 29-year-old woman on Anti-retroviral Therapy (ART) presented with a short history of generalized hair loss associated with a non-itchy maculopapular rash and skin depigmentation on the feet. Limited laboratory testing confirmed a diagnosis of secondary syphilis. She was treated with Benzathine Penicillin 2.4MU. After receiving three doses of the recommended treatment, the presenting features cleared, and the patient recovered fully.ConclusionThis case demonstrates the importance of a high index of clinical suspicion and testing for syphilis in patients presenting with atypical clinical features of secondary syphilis, such as hair loss and hypopigmentation. It also highlights the challenges in diagnosing and clinically managing syphilis in a resource-limited setting.

'n Interseksionele ondersoek: Godsdiens, feminisme, identiteit en behoort in geselekteerde

Religion is a common theme in Afrikaans literature. Religious references are used in many ways-during the anti-apartheid struggle it was (for instance) employed to protest the actions of the government in literary texts such as poetry. Similarly, women poets use religion, which is usually associated with patriarchy, as a metaphor for struggles with identity and belonging. Spirituality and organised religion are also shown to be differing concepts with organised religion being the product of society which influences the position of different genders within its stuctures. Spirituality refers to something inherently human related to the individual's personal belief system. In this article, religious reflections in poetry by three very different female poets will be explored as musings on how religion and belonging to a religious tradition are experienced. This will be done from the perspective of postsecular feminism, which does not revert to binary oppositions when discussing religion, but grapples with it in an intersectional way, as argued by Nandini Deo. An intersectional feminist approach will therefore be utilised to analyse selected poems of Lynthia Julius in Uit die kroes (From the kroes) (2020), of Corné Coetzee in nou, hier (now, here) (2017) and of Radna Fabias in Habitus (2018). Julius, a young black woman, and Coetzee, an older white woman, are Afrikaans poets whose work can be viewed as containing feminist ideas while also exploring the role of religion. Fabias, a black Dutch poet from Curaçao, represents a transnational example where similar themes are explored as in the work of the two Afrikaans poets, albeit from a very different intersectional position. In this article, intersections of, not just gender and race, but also culture, language, politics, nationality, age, ethnicity and identity are considered when understanding a woman's sense of belonging to a religion.

Epistemic Responsibility and Community Engagement in Sindiwe Magona’s Beauty’s Gift

HIV/AIDS has pervasively affected the health and well-being of South African women, as evidenced by their exacerbating mortality rates over the decades. Sindiwe Magona’s Beauty’s Gift (2008) is a critical intervention in this regard because, in focusing on the death of a young black woman owing to her infection with HIV/AIDS, it critiques the overarching and ingrained patriarchal ideologies that are hindering the treatment and prevention of this disease. The article seeks to examine Magona’s text as uncovering the lack of appropriate knowledge about HIV/AIDS, and the silencing of South African women in the articulation or dissemination of this disease-related knowledge. The article argues that Magona’s text emphasizes the delinking of taboos and highlights the necessity of the South African community’s engagement at micro and macro levels regarding HIV/AIDS. This engagement reflects an epistemic responsibility that is crucial to reducing the dreadful impact of this illness from both cultural and structural perspectives.

Turner Family Stories: From Enslavement in Virginia to Freedom in VermontThe Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont, Drawn by New England Cartoonists

Turner Family Stories: From Enslavement in Virginia to Freedom in VermontThe Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont, Drawn by New England Cartoonists

The Art of Artlessness: Affective Labor and the Black Mask in Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha"

Abstract: In Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha" affective labor simultaneously enables and masks forms of intimacy that may otherwise be considered illicit. Meanwhile, forms of embodied difference become red herrings intended to draw attention away from—while making possible—the forms of homosocial intimacy and knowledge-making that constitute unpaid, gendered labor. While the story of "Melanctha" ostensibly hinges on a young Black woman's vexed relations of care, it is also a story about modernist storytelling, drawing on and concealing the work of Blackness as it makes possible Stein's innovations in form. The narrator seems invested in portraying Melanctha as an unwittingly unreliable character, emphasizing that she lacks the knowledge, intentionality, and memory required to tell stories. That Stein can shape a narrative with apparent artlessness is significant when considering the influence of the African mask on her formal experimentation. This essay contends that affective labor is what binds artlessness, artifice, and embodied difference together in Stein's novella. While others have argued that the Black mask reveals and facilitates the expression of non-normative forms of intimacy in "Melanctha," I claim that by performing its crucial secret-keeping function, the mask—and the affective labor it represents—cannot help but reveal itself. Drawing inspiration from the works of Arlie Hochschild, Silvia Federici, and Sianne Ngai, this essay reframes affective labor as a deliberate and affirmative practice by which people employ their feelings to leverage social interactions, acquire knowledge, and navigate structures of power.

Psychotic Misdiagnosis of Racially Minoritized Patients: A Case-Based Ethics, Equity, and Educational Exploration.

The overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of racially minoritized groups as having a primary psychotic disorder is one of psychiatry's longest-standing inequities born of real-time clinician racial bias. Evidence suggests that providers assign a diagnosis of schizophrenia and/or schizoaffective disorder according to race more than any other demographic variable, and this inequity persists even in the absence of differences in clinician symptom ratings. This case report describes the journey of one young Black woman through her racialized misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and the process by which interdisciplinary, health equity-minded providers across the spectrum of medical education and practice joined together to provide a culturally informed, systematic rediagnosis of major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Expert discussion is provided by three Black academic psychiatrists with expertise in social justice and health equity. We provide an evidence-based exploration of mechanisms of clinician racial bias and detail how the psychosis misdiagnosis of racially minoritized groups fails medical ethics and perpetuates iatrogenic harm to patients who truly need help with primary mood, trauma, and substance use disorders.

Respite. Quiet. A House of Dreams.

Respite. Quiet. A House of Dreams.

Celebrification of Breonna Taylor: perfection as the prerequisite for visibility, commodification and activism

Breonna Taylor rose from obscurity to notoriety in the aftermath of her killing by police officers in her home. The celebrification of Taylor as an innocent young Black woman was central to the Black Lives Matter movement during the summer of 2020. This essay examines the process by which celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and artists such as Amy Sherald memorialized Taylor, while activists rallied to demand that officers be held accountable for her death. Finally, Taylor’s case is considered in the context of #SayHerName and efforts to elevate Black women victims of police violence.

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom. By Derecka Purnell (Verso, 2021, pp.320, £16.99 pbk)

In both Europe and the United States, policing—as opposed to prisons—as an issue for abolitionists is a quite recent development (see Duran and Simon 2019). In the United States, its rise has been associated with activist groups like Black Lives Matter attempting to respond to decades of police violence against Black people—of which the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 was one example in a long line of incidents many of which are documented in this book. Rather than a general presentation of the case for police abolition Becoming Abolitionists is a powerful autobiography by a young Black woman growing up in St Louis, Missouri, becoming a radical lawyer and political activist in a world where police shootings and violence towards Black communities are part of everyday life. It is an absorbing account of how the author’s experience drove her political development from initially working...

La Linea del Colore

La Linea del Colore

Rock Trolls and Recovery

Rock Trolls and Recovery

“It is what it is”: Using Storied‐Identity and intersectionality lenses to understand the trajectory of a young Black woman's science and math identities

AbstractScience, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) identity has become a popular lens in science education research. However, few studies have looked at how using the interpersonal, structural, cultural, and disciplinary domains of power sheds light on how women of color differently navigate the various cultures of formal and informal schooling as well as college science and math departments. This paper uses narrative inquiry methodology to examine how a young Black woman constructs science and math identities through stories about her previous experiences becoming a science and math person. By also framing it within intersectionality and employing a storied‐identity lens, this study provides insight into how stories that shape identities inform her science and math identities. Specifically, this study looked at how she navigated the emotions and social experiences that fostered an interwoven storied science, math, and racial identity across different times, spaces, and settings. It highlights how a strong sense of belonging in her science and math trajectories was positively influenced through various sources and moments of recognition from community influences (e.g., family, peers, and faculty) and structural disruptions (e.g., the HBCU she attended and STEM camp). Despite negative emotions of self‐doubt and frustration were present when her science, math, racial, and smart student identities came into conflict, she leveraged the positive emotions of joy and pride in her interwoven science and math storylines, which strengthened not only her science and math identities but also her racial identity. The study underscores the importance of leveraging counter‐narratives of resilience as a resilience strategy but also practicing acceptance and self‐compassion when navigating tensions between racial, science, math, and smart‐student identities for women of color in STEM. The study's conclusions add to the call for structural changes within K‐12 and higher education that are crucial for equity goals within STEM education.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Analyzed Through the Lens of a Cultural Materialism

Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye follows a young black woman as she grapples with the conflicting pressures of the black beauty ideal and the reality of violence in the black community. Morrison shows that even the most well-intentioned people may damage one another in the story when they are bound by poverty and social disgrace. Morrison argues that people's desire to use violence is a misperception. According to them, negative expressions of love lead to distortion, which in turn causes agony.

A reproductive justice response to HIV/AIDS and COVID-19

Lana is a young Black woman living with HIV in Kingston, Jamaica. A mother of young children, she was concerned about what COVID-19 would mean for her pre-existing diagnosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic she has struggled to find psychosocial support groups, consistent access to antiretrovirals, and employment opportunities to maintain her health and support herself and her family. Pam, a middle-aged HIV-positive woman in Detroit, MI, USA, is a caregiver and local HIV organiser who provides emotional and social support to other newly diagnosed people.

Review: The (Un)Known Project. Louisville, Kentucky

Review: <i>The (Un)Known Project</i>. Louisville, Kentucky

Being a Young Black Woman in Today’s Society …

Research Article| October 01 2021 Being a Young Black Woman in Today’s Society … Nylan J. Ntabazi Nylan J. Ntabazi Nylan J. Ntabazi is a teaching assistant for the Focused Inquiry Department and an undergraduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is majoring in Forensic Science with a concentration in Forensic Biology and double minoring in Chemistry and Biology. She is active in various community service organizations at her university and was on the Dean’s Honor List for two semesters in 2020. She is the winner of several scholarship awards, including the Chesterfield County Public Schools Superintendent Excellence in Academic and Service Award in 2018. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2021) 134 (534): 383–384. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.134.534.0383 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nylan J. Ntabazi; Being a Young Black Woman in Today’s Society …. Journal of American Folklore 1 January 2021; 134 (534): 383–384. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.134.534.0383 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Folklore Search Advanced Search Blackness (racial identity), ethnic stereotyping, personal narratives, racism, women The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2021 You do not currently have access to this content.

Binding Trauma

Binding Trauma