From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature from Charles Chesnutt to Toni Morrison
Trudier Harris
Mar 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Diana Blue
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8 hr 44 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
From Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Black writers, some of whom worked as maids themselves, have manipulated the stereotype in a strategic way as a figure to comment on Black-white relations or to dramatize the conflicts of the Black protagonists. In fact, the characters themselves, like real-life maids, often use the stereotype to their advantage or to trick their oppressors. Harris combines folkloristic, sociological, historical, and psychological analyses with literary ones, drawing on her own interviews with Black women who worked as domestics. She explores the differences between Northern and Southern maids and between "mammy" and "militant." Often privileging political statements over realistic characterization in the design of their texts, the authors in Harris's study urged Black Americans to take action to change their powerless conditions, politely if possible, violently if necessary. In her new afterword, "From Militants to Movie Stars," Harris looks at domestic workers in African American literature after the original publication of her book in 1982. Exploring five subsequent literary treatments of Black domestic workers, Harris tracks how the landscape of representation of domestic workers has broken with tradition and continues to transform into something entirely new.
About the author
Trudier Harris is University Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of English, the University of Alabama, and J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she taught courses in African American literature and folklore.
Diana Blue received her BFA in drama from Hofstra University and her MA in theater education from Emerson College. She is a classically trained actor, choreographer, and voice performer who resides in Connecticut. Additionally, she is passionate in her work as a K-12 theater educator and director.
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