Book Review: Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature
by Davina Elaine Bell, Social Sciences/Business, Science and Technology Departments, Central Library
Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature
Ayesha K. Hardison
Ayesha K. Hardison’s Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature critically scrutinizes “Jane Crow” in African American literature; the racial and sexual oppression of black women during the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Arts Movement. In “At the Point of No Return: A Native Son and His Gorgon Muse” and “Gender Conscriptions, Class Conciliations, and the Bourgeois Blues Aesthetic,” Hardison evaluates gender discrimination in the writings of Richard Wright and the rules governing black women concerning public respectability and social mobility in the black community based on “pedestal white womanhood.” Hardison examines the convention of “bourgeois blues,” to illustrate the effects of disenfranchisement experienced by black women.
Hardison dispels the myths of the “pedestal figure of femininity as white,” and confronts the treatment of sexual violence against black women in literature in “‘Nobody Could Tell Who This Be’: Black and White Doubles and the Challenge to Pedestal Femininity” and “‘I’ll See How Crazy They Think I Am’: Pulping Sexual Violence, Racial Melancholia, and Healthy Citizenship.” Zora Neale Hurston’s and Ann Petry’s works challenge the exclusivity of white women’s affiliation and the prohibition of black women into the group of “true womanhood.” Curtis Lucas’s Third Ward Newark (1946) surveys and illustrates black women’s experience in the “double jeopardy” effect of sexual violation and the “racial melancholia” due to the inability of the victim to obtain justice.
Hardison moves on to “Rereading the Construction of Womanhood in Popular Narratives of Domesticity” and “The Audacity of Hope: An American Daughter and Her Dream of Cultural Hybridity,” in which she explores Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maude Martha (1953) and Era Bell Thompson’s autobiography, American Daughter (1946). She uses Maude Martha to dispel the myths glamorizing domestic servitude performed by black women in both the white and black press.
Hardison then examines Era Bell Thompson’s acceptance of “western white utopia” and her rejection of the traditional image of blackness with southern oppression. Hardison contends that Thompson maintains “tacit, exigent diplomacy” in her investigation of Thompson’s experiences of racial and gender discrimination under “Jane Crow” in her career as a reporter and editor with Ebony magazine (Note: Ebony is available online for free in full text through Flipster Magazines to Birmingham residents with a JCLC library card).
Hardison successfully concludes her study acknowledging that while both black men and women suffered under Jim Crow oppression as explored in African American literature, special attention must be paid to both the gender and social injustice black women faced when analyzing African American literature. In “Epilogue: Refashioning Jane Crow and the Black Female Body,” Hardison examines the works of Jackie Ormes, the first African American female cartoonist. Hardison praises Ormes for her use of both visual and textual artistic expression to “eclipse” the subjugation caused by “Jane Crow” oppression with characters who demonstrate black womanhood. Ormes reclaims both the social and sexual validation “Jane Crow” intends to destroy.
The book Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature
by Ayesha K. Hardison is not available for checkout through the Jefferson County Library Cooperative (JCLC) system. But wait! Did you know that JCLC offers a service called Interlibrary Loan (ILL) where books (and photocopies of articles and government publications) may be borrowed from outside our system and sent to a library of your choice for pickup?
Ayesha K. Hardison
Ayesha K. Hardison’s Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature critically scrutinizes “Jane Crow” in African American literature; the racial and sexual oppression of black women during the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Arts Movement. In “At the Point of No Return: A Native Son and His Gorgon Muse” and “Gender Conscriptions, Class Conciliations, and the Bourgeois Blues Aesthetic,” Hardison evaluates gender discrimination in the writings of Richard Wright and the rules governing black women concerning public respectability and social mobility in the black community based on “pedestal white womanhood.” Hardison examines the convention of “bourgeois blues,” to illustrate the effects of disenfranchisement experienced by black women.
Hardison dispels the myths of the “pedestal figure of femininity as white,” and confronts the treatment of sexual violence against black women in literature in “‘Nobody Could Tell Who This Be’: Black and White Doubles and the Challenge to Pedestal Femininity” and “‘I’ll See How Crazy They Think I Am’: Pulping Sexual Violence, Racial Melancholia, and Healthy Citizenship.” Zora Neale Hurston’s and Ann Petry’s works challenge the exclusivity of white women’s affiliation and the prohibition of black women into the group of “true womanhood.” Curtis Lucas’s Third Ward Newark (1946) surveys and illustrates black women’s experience in the “double jeopardy” effect of sexual violation and the “racial melancholia” due to the inability of the victim to obtain justice.
Hardison moves on to “Rereading the Construction of Womanhood in Popular Narratives of Domesticity” and “The Audacity of Hope: An American Daughter and Her Dream of Cultural Hybridity,” in which she explores Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maude Martha (1953) and Era Bell Thompson’s autobiography, American Daughter (1946). She uses Maude Martha to dispel the myths glamorizing domestic servitude performed by black women in both the white and black press.
Hardison then examines Era Bell Thompson’s acceptance of “western white utopia” and her rejection of the traditional image of blackness with southern oppression. Hardison contends that Thompson maintains “tacit, exigent diplomacy” in her investigation of Thompson’s experiences of racial and gender discrimination under “Jane Crow” in her career as a reporter and editor with Ebony magazine (Note: Ebony is available online for free in full text through Flipster Magazines to Birmingham residents with a JCLC library card).
Hardison successfully concludes her study acknowledging that while both black men and women suffered under Jim Crow oppression as explored in African American literature, special attention must be paid to both the gender and social injustice black women faced when analyzing African American literature. In “Epilogue: Refashioning Jane Crow and the Black Female Body,” Hardison examines the works of Jackie Ormes, the first African American female cartoonist. Hardison praises Ormes for her use of both visual and textual artistic expression to “eclipse” the subjugation caused by “Jane Crow” oppression with characters who demonstrate black womanhood. Ormes reclaims both the social and sexual validation “Jane Crow” intends to destroy.
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The book Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature
by Ayesha K. Hardison is not available for checkout through the Jefferson County Library Cooperative (JCLC) system. But wait! Did you know that JCLC offers a service called Interlibrary Loan (ILL) where books (and photocopies of articles and government publications) may be borrowed from outside our system and sent to a library of your choice for pickup?
- Interlibrary Loan is available to anyone 18 years of age or older with a current, full-use Jefferson County public library card.
- Requests can be made in person at any Jefferson County public library, by phone, or online.
- This service is free of charge. Occasionally, however, the lending library will charge a fee. The patron may preauthorize acceptance of any fees on the ILL request form and will be notified of any fees before the material is ordered.
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