Women in chains : the legacy of slavery in Black women's fiction /

The recognition of black feminist criticism and its arguments as a formal literary tradition continues to be an uphill battle. Patton (Univ. of Nebraska) provides a well-researched argument for deliberate, concerted effort to dismantle traditional (white) race-based representations of black women in US literature by white US authors. Though she grounds her discussion in the work of Hortense Spillers and Angela Davis, she also builds on a diverse but well-argued range of interdisciplinary feminist and black feminist theorists, including Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Nancy Chodorow, and Marianne Hirsch. Focusing on seven black US women whose writings span the 19th and 20th centuries, she addresses stereotypes/tropes associated with the traditional/ patriarchal archetype of black women. By not conflating sex and gender, Patton can move beyond arguments deconstructing material definitions of motherhood imposed on black women by the institutionalized limitations of slavery and reveal the mythopoesis of a black female-centered archetype, one inextricable from the slave experience with no counterpart in traditional/white patriarchal mythology. Like Elaine Showalter (A Literature of Their Own, CH, Nov'77), Patton frames the process of evolution in three distinct stages--in this case, gender/maternity, gender/sexuality, and interconnections of gender/maternity/sexuality--to interrogate notions of biology and maternity as a common bond for all women. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. A. J. Gosselin; Cleveland State University