Black Womanhood

Black womanhood is the central topic that Jerkins investigates throughout her collection, mainly what black womanhood means and how it is constituted by the black woman's response to adversity and the racial discrimination enacted by whiteness culture. Jerkins addresses black women as the readers and subject of her essays. She envisions that its message may be "for all women," but not "about all women" (23). Thus Jerkins frames her language toward the possible black woman reader, without erasing the black woman's gaze and subjectivity from the margins of her pages. The role of her texts is resist the erasure of black women's lives and experiences, while investigating the difficulties with which black women define their identities in an inhospitable and whiteness dominated world.

Jerkins posits that black womanhood is both projected as a carnivalesque imposition on black women's body, coded as difference, and also a source of empowerment...