Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Becoming Ourselves: Black Women’S Autobiographical Interrogation Of Tropes Of Identity, Christina L. Duncan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

A central premise of this project is that Black female identity has historically been seen as a fixed identity. Much of the imposed rigidity on Black female identity has been informed by conservative strategies for survival. Such conservative strategies include respectability politics, as racial leaders have found utility in upholding the principle that if they or others work hard, they can uphold the race. Only by maintaining these standards of respectability have Black women been deemed as worthy and able to uphold and reinforce positive images of Blackness. Many of the stories written by Black women generally fall into the …