Belabored professions, narratives of African American working womanhood, Xiomara Santamarina
Type
Label
Belabored professions, narratives of African American working womanhood, Xiomara Santamarina
Language
eng
Index
no index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Belabored professions
Medium
electronic resource
Nature of contents
dictionaries
Responsibility statement
Xiomara Santamarina
Sub title
narratives of African American working womanhood
Summary
According to nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology, African American women served their race best as reformers and activists, or as "doers of the word." In Belabored Professions, Xiomara Santamarina examines the autobiographies of four women who diverged from that ideal and defended the legitimacy of their self-supporting wage labor.Santamarina focuses on The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Eliza Potter's A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, and Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes. She argues that beyond black reformers' calls for abolitionist work, these former slaves and freeborn black women wrote about their own overlooked or disparaged work as socially and culturally valuable to the nation. They promoted the status of wage labor as a mark of self-reliance and civic virtue when many viewed African American working women as "drudges." As Santamarina demonstrates, these texts offer modern readers new perspectives on the emergence of the vital African American autobiographical tradition, dramatizing the degree to which black working women participated in and shaped American rhetorics of labor, race, and femininity
Target audience
adult
Classification
Contributor
Creator
Subject
- African American women + Intellectual life -- 19th century
- Autobiography + Women authors
- African American women + Biography + History and criticism
- Electronic books
- American prose literature + African American authors + History and criticism
- Narration (Rhetoric) + History -- 19th century
- African American women in literature
- Autobiography + African American authors
- American prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- African American women + Employment + History
- African American women in the professions + History
- American prose literature + Women authors + History and criticism
- Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Content
Incoming Resources
- Has instance2
Outgoing Resources
- Classification1
- Contributor1
- Creator1
- Subject13
- African American women + Intellectual life -- 19th century
- Autobiography + Women authors
- African American women + Biography + History and criticism
- Electronic books
- American prose literature + African American authors + History and criticism
- Narration (Rhetoric) + History -- 19th century
- African American women in literature
- Autobiography + African American authors
- American prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- African American women + Employment + History
- African American women in the professions + History
- American prose literature + Women authors + History and criticism
- Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century
- Content1