This Will Be My Undoing Summary
Morgan Jerkins

This Will Be My Undoing Overview

Morgan Jerkins' collection of essays chronicle her personal development as she strives to define the meaning of black womanhood. Jerkins investigates how societal demands placed on black women conform their bodies to a white standard, while blackness is devalued. Jerkins struggles against the toxic imperatives of her upbringing, seeking to define herself through the black woman's gaze, in a coming of age in which she departs from self-doubt toward self-adulation. She confronts racist and sexists ideologies that once shaped her, and seeks to provide a nuanced perspective of her experience as a black woman that departs from stereotypical constraints. Her essays deal with the male gaze, racism, whiteness, and solidarity among black women.