Title From slave cabins to the White House : homemade citizenship in African American culture / Koritha Mitchell

Published Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2020] ©2020

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 274 pages) : illustrations Series The new Black studies series New Black studies series. Contents House Slaves, Housekeepers, Homemakers -- A Home of One's Own -- No, Really : A Home of One's Own -- New Negroes, New Homes -- Home as Human Right and Black Power -- Still the Master's House? -- The Ultimate Home : Michelle Obama in the White House -- From Mom-in-Chief to Predator-in-Chief Summary Most Americans would agree that devoted wives and mothers make families strong and that strong families are the bedrock of society. Yet, throughout this nation's history, Black women have managed to become model mothers and wives, but their doing so has not kept them from being mistaken for "welfare queens" and "baby mamas," the stereotypes that most consistently shape U.S. public policy. In this book, the author shows the evolving connections between Black women's homemaking and citizenship from domesticities of the slave cabin and to Michelle Obama in the White House. Drawing on canonical texts by and about African American women, the author begins by connecting the roles of Black women as rape survivor, race mother, single lady, matriarch, the strong Black woman, and the evolving Black woman to the various roles that the site of the home served in the eras of post-emancipation, the New Negro, Civil Rights, post-civil rights, and the "post-racial." By looking at key protagonists in literary texts by authors like Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry, Octavia Butler, and Alice Walker, this book exposes readers to the palpable tension that emerges when African Americans, especially women, continue to invest in traditional domesticity even while seeing the signs that it will not yield for them the respectability and safety it should - in America, Black women might become decent housekeepers, but never homemakers. All in all, the confluence of these domestic locations and scripts shows that at every juncture, the home was a site where African American women and families negotiated and reasserted their citizenship in a society and culture that consistently and persistently continues to marginalize and assert violence against African Americans, regardless of how they met standards of respectability and citizenry. -- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on September 11, 2020) Subject American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism Women and literature -- United States -- History African American women in literature. African Americans in literature. African American women -- Intellectual life African American women -- Social life and customs African Americans -- Race identity. SOCIAL SCIENCE / General African American women in literature African American women -- Intellectual life African American women -- Social life and customs African Americans in literature African Americans -- Race identity American literature -- African American authors American literature -- Women authors Women and literature United States Genre/Form Electronic books Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book LC no. 2020005317 ISBN 025205220X 9780252052200

Other Titles Homemade citizenship in African American culture

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