{"product_id":"from-mammies-to-militants","title":"From Mammies to Militants","description":"Welfare queen, hot momma, unwed mother: these stereotypes of Black women share their historical conception in the image of the Black woman as domestic. Focusing on the issue of stereotypes, the new edition of Trudier Harris’s classic 1982 study \u003ci\u003eFrom Mammies to Militants\u003c\/i\u003e examines the position of the domestic in Black American literature with a new afterword bringing her analysis into the present.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From Charles Chesnutt’s \u003ci\u003eThe Marrow of Tradition\u003c\/i\u003e to Toni Morrison’s \u003ci\u003eThe Bluest Eye\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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.” Her invaluable book provides a sweeping exploration of Black American writers of the twentieth century, with extended discussion of works by Charles Chesnutt, Kristin Hunter, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, William Melvin Kelley, Alice Childress, John A. Williams, Douglas Turner Ward, Barbara Woods, Ted Shine, and Ed Bullins. 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. Through their commitment to improving the conditions of Black people in America, these writers demonstrate the connectedness of art and politics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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 from Ernest J. Gaines’s \u003ci\u003eA Lesson Before Dying\u003c\/i\u003e to Lynn Nottage’s \u003ci\u003eBy the Way, Meet Vera Stark\u003c\/i\u003e, Harris tracks how the landscape of representation of domestic workers has broken with tradition and continues to transform into something entirely new.","brand":"The University of Alabama Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55318594650456,"sku":"9780817322038","price":104.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780817322038_a5211dba-0021-4b37-931c-59383fd8fdb8.jpg?v=1779515165","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/from-mammies-to-militants","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}