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Theorizing Rival Rhetorics of Black Maternities: Imagining (Re)Productive Life in Social Death

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Theorizing Rival Rhetorics of Black Maternities: Imagining (Re)Productive Life in Social Death THEORIZING RIVAL RHETORICS OF BLACK MATERNITIES: IMAGINING (RE)PRODUCTIVE LIFE IN SOCIAL DEATH by Ashley Renée Hall B.A., Christopher Newport University, 2010 M.A., Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2012 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Ashley Renée Hall It was defended on April 22, 2016 and approved by Dr. Brent Malin, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Dr. Ronald J. Zboray, Full Professor, Department of Communication Dr. Waverly Duck, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, Visting Professor, Humanities Center ii Copyright © by Ashley Renée Hall 2016 iii THEORIZING RIVAL RHETORICS OF BLACK MATERNITIES: IMAGINING (RE)PRODUCTIVE LIFE IN SOCIAL DEATH Ashley Renée Hall, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 This dissertation considers the ways that Black women navigate the anti-black violence that constrains them, creating social life within social death via their (re)production. The narratives of racial difference embedded within cultural pathology criminalizing Black women’s attempts to “produce properly” has meant that they have had to find creative ways to mother and empower themselves. In de-centering a concern for mothering as biological, this study primarily focuses on the ways Black women mother self via their strategies of self-care. I draw from and speak to the history of Black women’s particular (re)productive struggles to imagine a different kind of rhetorical framework, Black Maternal Futurism (BMF). Black Feminist Studies, Black Queer Studies, and Afro-pessimism & Afro- futurism constitute the theoretical landscape in which I position this project on Black mothering, sexual expression, and (re)production. In imagining rhetoric as “something different,” this project analyzes rhetorics produced by Black women about their mothering to gain a deeper understanding as to how they negotiate a violent, anti-black world. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................... VI 1.0 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….…….....1 2.0 THEORIZING BLACK MATERNAL FUTURISM……………………………………46 3.0 (RE)PRODUCING THE STRANGEST FRUIT………………………………………...68 4.0 BLOOD AT THE ROOT………………………………………………………………...111 5.0 "STILL I RISE"………………………………………………………………………….139 6.0 MAGICAL MELANIN…………………………………………………………………..191 7.0 MOTHERING STRANGE FRUIT………………………………………………………210 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………..220 v PREFACE I dedicate this dissertation to Black women who have fought, bled, and died to live and thrive in a world built to devalue and destroy them. This dissertation would not have been possible without the encouragement of my Advisor, Soror, and friend Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley. You have challenged me and pushed me to not only be a better scholar and mentor but to be a better woman. Knowing you and learning from you has truly changed my life. I would like to thank my Soror and friend, Dominique D. Johnson for teaching me so much about what it means to love and support another person through good times, bad times, and all the times in between. I would not have made it through this process without you and for that I will always be grateful. I am beyond proud to call you my Sister. I would also like to thank my co-chair and committee members for their investment in me as a growing scholar and my research. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, Janine and Don Stoddard, for their encouragement, wisdom, and love throughout my entire academic journey. vi CHAPTER ONE: BLACK MOTHERING, CONTROLLING IMAGES, AND THE ACADEMY We have to resist injustice and talk back to it, but not at the expense of being well. I don’t want to give myself over to the struggle. I don’t want to be superwoman in my twenties, strongwoman in my thirties, and suffocated in my forties. We can’t let the work (and there is much work to be done) take us out. We have to be mindful how we engage others and ourselves, especially when it comes to obligations and expectations of our time, mind, bodies, thoughts, experiences, and hearts. I don’t want to give myself away.1 In a 2010 interview conducted by Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey talks about her life and her personal and professional journey that has led her to a moment in time where she now is launching her own television network, OWN. In celebration of Oprah’s career and success, she sits down with Barbara Walters where she is asked very directly about her relationship with her mother and father as it concerns her painful upbringing. When asked about her father, Oprah states plainly, he is fine. And our relationship is fine.”2 However, when Walters asks her about her parents and whether she sees them and if they are terribly close, Oprah says, “I wouldn’t say we are terribly close. I’m grateful that they could do for me what they could for me.” Unlike her responses concerning her mother and father, Oprah visibly becomes emotional when asked about her friendship with Gayle King. Oprah says, “She has always been happier for me in everything that’s ever happened to me than even I was.” Her eyes starting to water, Oprah goes on to say, 1Crunk Feminist Collective. “How to Not Die: Some Survival Tips for Black Women Who Are Asked to Do Too Much,” Crunk Feminist Collective (blog), June 2013, http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2013/06/07/how-to- not-die-some-survival-tips-for-black-women-who-are-asked-to-do-too-much/. 2Oprah Winfrey, interviewed by Barbara Walters, ABC News: Barbara Walter’s Special, December 09, 2010. 1 “She is the mother I never had. She is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person. I don’t know a better person…its making me cry cause I’m thinking about how much uh, I have never told her that.” The conversation Oprah has with Barbara Walters about her friendship with Gayle King complicates anti-black heteronormative, biologically determinant discourses regarding Black women’s mothering practices. While I focus on the ways that Oprah’s comments complicate conventional notions of mothering, my intention is not to diminish the ways she talks about Gayle as a sister and intimate friend “that everybody deserves.” Mothering, for Oprah, in these moments, is not inextricably bound by blood ties and traditional familial relations as she explicitly states that she is not “terribly close” to her parents. Mother, in Oprah’s use speaks not of a biological connection between herself and Gayle rather a kinship these two women established between each other. Oprah complicates Black women’s mothering in her description of Gayle as her mother, sister, and friend. She complicates heteronormative narratives regulating mothering as the mothering she speaks of de-center the importance of blood ties. Oprah’s discussion of her best friend Gayle King prompts opportunity to imagine the ways Black women challenge the time and place in context of violence shaping their everyday lives. Oprah’s contribution on mothering, as I understand her, disrupts time and place as she implicitly questions primary emphasis on biology and blood ties. In de-centering blood ties as the primary relations, Oprah centers kinship ties to describe her friendship with Gayle. In centering the importance of kinship ties, I argue that Oprah generates moments in which she mothers herself in light of the painful childhood. The biology and heterosexuality embedded within anti-black heteronormative conceptions of mothering foreclose opportunities to consider the complexities of Black women’s 2 (re)productive lives. It is the assumed biology and heterosexuality associated with mothering and reproduction that aids in dehumanizing and criminalizing Black women in anti-blackness. In challenging mothering as biological and reproduction as heterosexual, I study Black women’s literary and public discourses to re-imagine the ways they assert their worth through practices of self-care in anti-black heteropatriarchy. In de-centering a concern for mothering as biological, I center instead a primary focus on the ways Black women mother self via their strategies of self- care. Focusing on the ways Black women strategize mothering themselves does not rule out or prevent a consideration of the struggles associated with rearing children. I contend that in interrogating the ways Black women mother themselves speaks to the complexities of their lives as they question what it means to be human in anti-black heteropatriarchal world. Alexis Pauline Gumbs discusses the significance of queer Black feminist writers’ literary traditions relating these traditions directly to conversation on Black maternity and bodily autonomy.3 She states, “black feminists audaciously centered an entire literary movement around the invocation of this criminal act of black maternity, demanding not only the rights of black women to reproductive autonomy in the biological sense but also in the imperative to create narratives, theories, contexts, collectives, publications, political ideology and more.”4 I draw from Gumbs’ emphasis on Black women’s productive and sexual reproductive labor in connection to the criminal act of mothering as it provides space to begin reimagining Black women’s mothering in the time and place that subjects them. Black mothering as queer(ed) is a futuristic conception that aids in rereading the ways Black women mother themselves and 3Alexis Pauline Gumbs, ‘We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves’: A Dialogically Produced Audience and Black Feminist Publishing 1979 to the ‘Present’, Gender Forum 22 (2008), www.org/issues/black-womens-writing- revisited/we-can-learn-to-mother-ourselves. 4Ibid., para. 3. 3 kinship networks.5 Their rhetorical practices disrupt authority of anti-black heteronormativity articulated through normative ideas of race, gender, sexuality, and class, queer(ing) the time and space subjecting Black women.
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