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Performing Brawn and Sass: Strength and Disability in Black Women’s Writing

Jones, Sidney
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9301-6145
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598009092323701

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
My dissertation, Performing Brawn and Sass: Strength and Disability in Black Women’s Writing, examines contemporary African American narratives to gauge how writers re-imagine, complicate, or even reject the trope of the Strong Black Woman. I define the “Strong Black Woman” as a standard that black women are assumed to inherently demonstrate. As opposed to the demureness of conventional femininity, the Strong Black Woman is portrayed as bold and outspoken. In addition to being physically strong and able to labor, she possesses the emotional and mental resolve that allows her to hold her family and her community together during hardship. The cultural endurance of the figure is a major problem I cite in my dissertation. Because the Strong Black Woman is such a cultural mainstay in African American literature and mainstream media, she has become a source of racial pride exclusively synonymous with black womanhood. However, I identify the Strong Black Woman as an ableist ideal that oversimplifies black female narrative voice and erases bodily variety. I argue that by rejecting the Strong Black Woman’s ableism and investment in self-sacrifice while adapting her dedication to survival and independence, black women writers present black female characters less familiar than the Strong Black Woman, but more complex and human. I take a two-pronged approach to my methodology, placing scholarship from black feminist theory and disability studies in conversation with one another. Black feminist theory’s investigation of race and gender, and the dynamics between black women and systems of power greatly informs my character analysis. Furthermore, disability studies critics have shown how normativity isn’t an objective, universal measure, but is instead an extension of hegemony, marking and policing all bodies that exist outside of the white ideal. My dissertation uses this conceptual framework to explore how the representation of black women’s bodyminds and behavior as inherently deviant is naturalized by notions of normativity. I examine Sapphire’s Push (1996), Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973), Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals (1980), Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression (1998), Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death (2010) to highlight how black women writers are constructing nuanced portraits of strength across genres, from memoirs to speculative fiction.
Andrea Williams (Committee Chair)
Robyn Warhol (Advisor)
Koritha Mitchell (Advisor)
Treva Lindsey (Advisor)
234 p.
African Americans; Gender Studies; Literature
Strong Black Woman; black feminist theory; disability studies; ableism; normativity; grotesque; pain; intersectionality; gender; race; difference; literacy; overcoming; narrative; illness; medical industry; supercrip; speculative fiction

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jones, S. (2020). Performing Brawn and Sass: Strength and Disability in Black Women’s Writing [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598009092323701

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jones, Sidney. Performing Brawn and Sass: Strength and Disability in Black Women’s Writing. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598009092323701.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jones, Sidney. "Performing Brawn and Sass: Strength and Disability in Black Women’s Writing." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598009092323701

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1598009092323701
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.