Refusing to Be Made Whole: Disability in Contemporary Black Women's Writing
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Southern Methodist University SMU Scholar English Theses and Dissertations English Summer 8-2018 Refusing to Be Made Whole: Disability in Contemporary Black Women's Writing Anna Hinton Southern Methodist University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_english_etds Part of the African American Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hinton, Anna, "Refusing to Be Made Whole: Disability in Contemporary Black Women's Writing" (2018). English Theses and Dissertations. 5. https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_english_etds/5 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the English at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. REFUSING TO BE MADE WHOLE: DISABILITY IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK WOMEN’S WRITING Approved by: _______________________________________ Prof. Dickson-Carr Professor of English ___________________________________ Prof. Angela Ards Associate Prof. of English and Journalism ___________________________________ Prof. Therí Pickens Associate Prof. of English ___________________________________ Prof. Martha Satz Assistant Professor of English REFUSIING TO BE MADE WHOLE: DISABILITY IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK WOMEN’S WRITING A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of Dedman College Southern Methodist University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a Major in English by Anna Hinton M.A., English, Southern Methodist University B.A., English, Virginia State University August 7, 2018 Copyright (2018) Anna Hinton All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work could not have been accomplished without the patience and wisdom of my advisor, Prof. Darryl Dickson-Carr and the encouragement and mentorship of Prof. Angela Ards and Prof. Martha Satz. I would like to thank Prof. Therí Pickens for paving the road for my work, graciously joining my team, and providing feedback. I am also indebted to Prof. Steve Wisenberger, Prof. Timothy Rosendale, and Prof. Beth Newman who, along with my colleagues at the Taos writing workshops, provided feedback on what later became sections of chapter five. To that end, I am especially thankful for my colleagues here at SMU: Dr. Laurin Miskin, Dr. Kathrine Boswell, Dr. Kari Nixon, Dr. Christopher Stampone, Summer Hamilton, Anna Nelson, Kathrine Harceclode, Liz Duke, and particularly my cohort and writing companions Kelsey Kiser, Andrew Forrester, Chelsea McKelvey, and Seth McKelvey. I would be lost without their encouragement, feedback, and faith in my project. I'm also forever grateful to my family whose lives are the inspiration for this project, particularly my Nana, Yvonne Smith, may she rest in power and my mother, Georgina Ferrell and sister, Bre’Onca Ferrell, both of whom have also provided support, strength, love and childcare; Kevin Hinton, who has kindly read drafts and listened to my rants; and, my daughter, Ella Naomi Hinton, who makes me feel that anything is possible. iv Hinton, Anna B.A., English, Virginia State University, 2011 M.A., English, Southern Methodist University, 2016 Refusing to Be Made Whole: Disability in Contemporary Black Women’s Writing Advisor: Professor Darryl Dickson-Carr Doctor of Philosophy conferred April 7, 2018 Dissertation completed May 30, 2018 My dissertation argues that disability profoundly shapes the thematic and aesthetic choices of black women writing in the post-Brown era, despite arguments that suggest the contrary. For instance, Gayl Jone’s Corregidora is told from the first-person perspective of a black woman diagnosed as insane and incarcerated in a psychiatric prison for murder. The use of the first-person results in what I argue, building on Michael Berube’s work, is a disabled text. Moreover, a through the protagonist’s story, a stark critique of misogynoir and ableism emerges. Thus, while taking seriously disability studies scholars’ arguments that African American writers and activists dissociate disability from blackness, thereby marking disability as truly deviant, I demonstrate how black women, like Jones, have engaged a radical disability discourse in writing of this period. Drawing primarily from black feminist theory, crip theory, and the nascent sub- field of black disability studies, I argue that, though these women do not often use the word “disability,” much of their art and theory anticipates current conversations about disability and makes early interventions in how we discuss bodies and minds that society considers disabled. In fiction, life-writing, and essays by authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Naylor, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Octavia Butler, the medical model of disability is challenged, black v communities are forged through common disability, disabled black motherhood is empowering, and, more generally speaking, aesthetic and formal practices reflect a disability consciousness. In making these arguments, I force African American literary scholars to recognize disability as a validating identity category in these women’s works incorporated into their self-fashioning, and that I demand disability studies scholars to consider how celebratory identity politics can deny multiply marginalized women their complicated, often ambivalent experiences of disability. Until very recently, black women’s texts have remained mostly marginalized or ignored by scholars of critical disability studies; my work begins addresses this gap. I also push for scholars of critical race theory to recognize disability as a central thematic and political concern in these women’s writings and to engage critical disability studies as more than just the new trend, but as critical to conversation and theorization about race in the U.S. and elsewhere. My dissertation unearths the bridge between the supposedly parallel but never intersecting paths of critical race and disability studies. vi Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Motivation ................................................................................................................................... 2 Topic and Scope .......................................................................................................................... 3 Review of the Field ..................................................................................................................... 5 The Rise of Black Disability Studies .......................................................................................... 9 Critical Interventions.............................................................................................................. 14 Review of Literature ............................................................................................................... 21 A Brief History of Blackness and Disability ......................................................................... 25 Chapter Outline ...................................................................................................................... 33 CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................. 37 Troubling the Social Model of Disability .............................................................................. 39 Body, Mind, and Spirit ........................................................................................................... 41 Becoming Disabled in Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters ............................................ 43 Alternative Models of Disability in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and 1996 ........................ 52 Redefining Wholeness in Audre Lorde’s Autopathographies ............................................ 62 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................. 74 Disability and Community ..................................................................................................... 75 Illness, Disability, and Community in Alice Walker’s Fiction........................................ 80 Failed Communal Belonging in Meridian .......................................................................... 84 Homecoming ........................................................................................................................ 88 Communities of Care ........................................................................................................... 98 Powerful Disabled Women Empowering Disabled Communities in Toni Morrison’s Fiction..................................................................................................................................... 102 Disabled Pariah as Empowered Outlaw Woman .............................................................. 103 vii Alternative Domains: Disability Community in Morrison’s Work .................................. 108 Marooned Disabled Communities in Octavia Butler’s