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Belabored Professions

Narratives of African American Working Womanhood

By: Xiomara Santamarina

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Belabored Professions

Narratives of African American Working Womanhood

By: Xiomara Santamarina

According to nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology, African American women served their race best as reformers and activists, or as "doers of the word." In Belabored Professions, Xiomara Santamarina examines the autobiographies of four women who diverged from that ideal and defended the legitimacy of their self-supporting wage labor. Santamarina focuses on The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Eliza Potter's A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, and Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes. She argues that beyond black reformers' calls for abolitionist work, these former slaves and freeborn black women wrote about their own overlooked or disparaged work as socially and culturally valuable to the nation. They promoted the status of wage labor as a mark of self-reliance and civic virtue when many viewed African American working women as "drudges." As Santamarina demonstrates, these texts offer modern readers new perspectives on the emergence of the vital African American autobiographical tradition, dramatizing the degree to which black working women participated in and shaped American rhetorics of labor, race, and femininity.

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Page Count

237

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

080787700X

ISBN 13

9780807877005

Belabored Professions

Narratives of African American Working Womanhood

By: Xiomara Santamarina

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Belabored Professions

Narratives of African American Working Womanhood

By: Xiomara Santamarina

According to nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology, African American women served their race best as reformers and activists, or as "doers of the word." In Belabored Professions, Xiomara Santamarina examines the autobiographies of four women who diverged from that ideal and defended the legitimacy of their self-supporting wage labor. Santamarina focuses on The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Eliza Potter's A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, and Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes. She argues that beyond black reformers' calls for abolitionist work, these former slaves and freeborn black women wrote about their own overlooked or disparaged work as socially and culturally valuable to the nation. They promoted the status of wage labor as a mark of self-reliance and civic virtue when many viewed African American working women as "drudges." As Santamarina demonstrates, these texts offer modern readers new perspectives on the emergence of the vital African American autobiographical tradition, dramatizing the degree to which black working women participated in and shaped American rhetorics of labor, race, and femininity.

Average ratings

N/A

5

0%

4

0%

3

0%

2

0%

1

0%

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

237

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

080787700X

ISBN 13

9780807877005