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Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance

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Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592136681
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	07/15/2009
Pages:	194
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant is Associate Professor of Sociology and Education Studies at DePauw University. She is co-editor of Facing Racism in Education, 2nd edition.

Introduction: A Half-Told Tale of Black Womanhood
1. More Than “the Historical, the Monolithic Me”: Deconstructing Strong Black Womanhood
2. Living the Lies: Embodying “Good” Womanhood
3. Keeping up Appearances: The Performance of Strength
4. Lies Make Us Sick: Embodied Distress Among Strong Black Women
5. Coming to Voice: Transcending Strength
Epilogue: Mules No More, Just “Levelly Human”: A Societal Challenge
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Table of Participants

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Editorial Reviews

Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman makes an important contribution to the literature. No other work systematically studies the ways black women internalize and resist strong black woman discourse. Beauboeuf-Lafontant convincingly argues that investment in the strong black woman myth injures black women and strengthens the racist divisions between women.”—Maxine Craig, author of Ain’t I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race

From the Publisher

Sociologist Beauboeuf-Lafontant explores the "sociocultural lore" invoked in imaging the strong black woman. Bypassing familiar literary recreations of the oversacrificial Mammy and the oversexed Jezebel, she attends to the "growing autobiographical and clinical literature by Black women experiencing compulsive overeating and depression." She foregrounds the intersection of race and gender with fresh and thought-provoking insight as she challenges "the racialization of depression as a white illness" and of eating problems as exclusive to the privileged. She interviews 58 black women ranging in age from 19 to 67 about "what strength means to them." While many of her subjects reveal the involvement of familial communities in setting "the standards of stoicism, care, and selflessness that Black women encounter from girlhood through adulthood, at home and at work, among intimates and strangers," one-third were "strength-critical women," proponents of "self-care rather than self-neglect." This book may be too academic in tone to appeal to the popular reader, but one hopes her message will trickle out. (Sept.)
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Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance

Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance

Paperback

Paperback

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