| My dissertation examines the strategic avoidance, revision and articulation of black female sexuality in the works of seven black women writers/activists from the mid nineteenth century through the Harlem Renaissance. In this study I explore the deep literary and artistic contributions of novelist, poet and public speaker Frances Ellen Watkins Harper; poet, dramatist and fiction writer Angelina Weld Grimke, poets Mae Virginia Cowdery, Ethel Caution Davis, and Gladys Casely Hayford and finally, the compositions by blueswoman Lucille Bogan.;In the introduction, grounding my analysis in historical and cultural context, I consider how everyone had a stake in the representation of black women's bodies. From the tainted legacy of slavery, the antebellum slave narratives, the social purity, birth control and eugenics movements, to the later pseudo racial and sexological sciences and a culture blighted by lynching, many dominant cultural movements vied to write black female desire, mandating that black women write their own story.;Within these women writers' own communities, the black church and uplift practices and ideology were also invested in black women's eroticism, seeing uniform moral purity as an antidote to the prostitute stereotype. Black male publishers often refused subject matter that even broached sexuality, wanting instead stories that celebrated the exceptional and seemingly celibate black fictional characters. Both within literature and extending to culture at large, black women's bodies and desires were subsumed under what was deemed a greater cause, that of liberation. Nonetheless, many black women writers, through veiled codes, unexpected subplots, or even blatant descriptions defied the edict that they, for their own protection and the advancement of the race, must be sexually mute.;This project seeks to extend the critical terrain of Harlem Renaissance study and contribute to the ongoing dialogue regarding the voicing of black women's desire and also add to the discussion in feminist and queer studies regarding the politics of sex, gender and desire, including voices that have heretofore been barely audible---the vital voices of black women. |
