Not Your Mother's Mammy: The Black Domestic Worker in Transatlantic Women’s Media

Tracey L Walters

Published by Rutgers University Press 2021

Not Your Mother's Mammy

The Black Domestic Worker in Transatlantic Women’s Media

Tracey L Walters

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978808614

Overview
Contents

About this book

Not Your Mother’s Mammy examines how black artists of the African diaspora, many of them former domestics, reconstruct the black female subjectivities of domestics in fiction, film, and visual and performance art. In doing so, they undermine one-dimensional images of black domestics as victims lacking voice and agency and prove domestic workers are more than the aprons they wear. An analysis of selected media by Alice Childress, Nandi Keyi, Victoria Brown, Kara Walker, Mikalene Thomas, Rene Cox, Lynn Nottage, and others provides examples of generations of domestics who challenged their performative roles of subservience by engaging in subversive actions contradicting the image of the deferential black maid. Through verbal confrontation, mobilization, passive resistance, and performance, black domestics find their voices, exercise their power, and maintain their dignity in the face of humiliation. Not Your Mother’s Mammy brings to life stories of domestics often neglected in academic studies, such as the complexity of interracial homoerotic relationships between workers and employers, or the mental health challenges of domestics that lead to depression and suicide. In line with international movements like #MeToo and #timesup, the women in these stories demand to be heard.

Author / Editor information

TRACEY L. WALTERS is an associate professor of literature in the Department of Africana Studies at Stony Brook University in New York, where she also holds an affiliate appointment with the Department of English and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.

Reviews

"What Walters achieves is an aesthetic of the black female domestic, a study of the representational dynamics of the figure in film, visual art, and literature. This book is a fascinating showcase of black women's nuanced reimaginings of servitude's long afterlife."

— Kevin Quashie, author of The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture

"Challenging mainstream media’s unidimensional portrayal and mis/representation of black female domestic workers as vulnerable and lacking agency, Not Your Mother’s Mammy identifies the myriad ways domestic workers, i.e. essential services workers, engender the politics of subversion and exercise their (labor) rights. This book will certainly influence future studies on labor rights of black female domestic workers."

— Simone A. James Alexander, author of African Diasporic Women’s Narratives: Politics of Resistance, Survival, and Citizenship

"Tracey Walters weaves together a fascinating story about power and representation of Black domestic workers across the globe. Her attention to Black women artists and writers offers a compelling and empowering portrait of workers who were anything but silent and deferential. These 'quiet radicals,' as Walters describes them, are inspirational models for our time. This is a book about claiming space, giving voice, and, fundamentally, about remaking Black womanhood."

— Premilla Nadasen, author of Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women who Built a Movement

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Overview: The History of Black Women’s Domestic Labor from the Twentieth Century to the Present Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
Part 1: Quiet Subversion: The Radical Acts of Working-Class Women in the Domestic Sphere
2. Let’s Hear It from the Maid: Alice Childress’s Like One of the Family Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
3. Dirty Work: The Representation of Undocumented Caribbean Domestic Laborers in Nandi Keyi’s The True Nanny Diaries and Victoria Brown’s Minding Ben Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
4. Forbidden Kinship: Homoerotic Desire between the Maid and Mistress in Zanele Muholi’s “Massa” and Mina(h) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
Part 2: We Wear the Mask: Servitude, an Art of Performance and Deception
5. A Sartorial Expression of Frenchness in Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl: A Francophone Revision of Jean Genet’s The Maids Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
6. Maid in Hollywood: The Art of Performance in Theresa Harris’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
7. The Art of Dressing Up in Mary Sibande’s Long Live the Dead Queen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Part 3: Representing for Laure: African American / Caribbean Women’s Reimaginings of Édouard Manet’s Olympia
8. From the Margin to the Center: The Maid in Édouard Manet’s Olympia and the Politics of Recognition in the Artwork of Mickalene Thomas and Renee Cox Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
9. Kara Walker’s Marvelous Sugar Baby ‘Sphinx’: A Satirical Rendition of the Mammy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235