Masculinity Under Construction. LaToya Jefferson-James
for theme, opportunities are created for new avenues of interpretation and pedagogy.
Chapter 4, “A Word on Black Feminists, Womanists, and Writers,” begins with a quote by Anna Julia Cooper. Contrary to traditional beliefs, feminism IS NOT foreign to Black women. Black women rejected different articulations of feminism by Euro-American women, because the objective seemed to be sharing individual power with Euro-American males rather than equality for all people. Black women simultaneously pioneered feminist strategies in their respective communities in order to combat inequality in whatever form it appeared. For example, author Una Marson of Jamaica fought tirelessly for equality for Rastafarian families and children. She instituted many of the social uplift programs that served Jamaican families for decades. Additionally, Black women rejected the idea put forth by Euro-American feminists that women should fight for total biological erasure of differences in order to receive equanimous treatment in their societies. Black women maintain that difference is not equitable to an uneven binary with women receiving the lesser. Differences can be acknowledged and respected while our practices remain free of discriminatory treatment. For this reason, Black feminist/womanist writers do not use the idea of gender complementarity in the derogatory way that such an idea is cast in Western society. Furthermore, women from Sojourner Truth to bell hooks have cautioned Black men against imitating the standards of manhood set by their patriarchal former masters. Sadly, anti-racist Black males are not always anti-sexist. And there have been instances when Black men who were unflinchingly devoted to the liberation of Black people equated “people” with “Black men.” According to Black womanist scholars, this type of thinking does not alleviate inequality in our respective communities, but only changes the color of the faces governing systems of exploitation.
Chapter 5, “Concerns of the Heart(h): Black Male Characters in Black Women’s Writings,” briefly leaves the creative works of Black male writers in order to privilege the writings of Black women who feature Black male protagonists. Far too often within academic circles, Black feminism has been/is being misread as nothing more than a long list of the wrongs committed by Black men. This is a simplified and dismissive reading of the aims and intent of Black feminist writers. Further, even in academia, it is commonly accepted and espoused that Black women’s struggle for equality, frequently within their own homes and communities, is in opposition to Black struggles for freedom from white oppression. For example, there are new articles published each year that claim Black women writers essentially ended the Black Arts Movement, as opposed to Black people’s lack of interest in nationalism as we were begrudgingly accepted into predominantly white institutions. When Black women writers privilege Black male protagonists, they do so as a plea for Black males not to internalize certain toxic features of hegemonic masculinity. Even BEFORE Connell’s articulation of various masculine identities, Black women writers and activists such as Sojourner Truth and Maria W. Stewart challenged Black men to establish and create masculine identities independent of the patriarchal institution and outside of the limits of the Puritanical manhood that informed New England’s masculine tradition. According to Black women writers, a struggle for equality which does not change a system of oppression, but only the color of the masculine faces who control that system, is ultimately a hierarchical struggle and nothing more. After struggles of hierarchy, repression is replicated intrapersonally, locally, regionally, and even nationally. Ba’s So Long a Letter, Marshall’s The Chosen Place the Timeless People, and Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, feature female characters who voice concern about struggles of hierarchy rather than true freedom and equality for all people—not just men. In addition, Black women writers routinely demonstrate that one does not have to possess a penis in order to wield phallic authority. There are patriarchal women who oppress other women across economic and racial lines, which prompted a historical denial of European feminism by Black women across the African Diaspora. Black women’s rejection of European feminism does not preclude Black women’s participation in feminist projects. Feminism for Black women was manifested differently: it involved empowering and improving conditions for families rather than sharing power with white men. For example, Una Marson’s feminism, as mentioned earlier, pioneered social working on the island during the early 1900s. Her projects included raising money for veterans, feeding underserved children and ending discrimination against Rastafarian families and children. Likewise, Black women in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States reject European feminism, and created their own brand of feminism.
While the male protagonist of Ba’s So Long a Letter is dead by the time the protagonist writes her letter, she uses his death in order to demonstrate how easily struggles of freedom become struggles of hierarchy. Her husband, Modou, was once a staunch freedom fighter in Senegal who became a government employee. He abuses the tenets of Islam to abandon his wife inside the marriage, marry a friend of his daughter, secure more material goods, then dies. In addition, her friend is the victim of a “traditional” mother-in-law who uses that tradition to disrespect and exclude younger women from the ranks of respectable society. In this case, the elder woman, and not a man, possess phallic authority. Marshall’s choice of car for the male interest in The Chosen Place, The Timeless People symbolizes the global system of white oppression experienced by people of color. The car eventually kills its owner, because he has chosen to reject his culture’s model of masculinity for what he witnesses in the United States. In the same text, a Jewish sociologist comes to study the island. His white wife, a blue-blood New England woman, funds the project. As the descendant of a female, New England business baroness, it is the wife—and not the husband—who possesses the phallus. Marshall, like other Caribbean women writers such as Maryse Conde, bypasses the American South as the scene of slavery, continued economic exploitation, and the harshest expression of the phallic economy. Instead, she links New England, considered the region that embodies all that is right about America, to Caribbean slavery and economic exploitation. The wife’s ancestor lived in New England, but owned stock in the Caribbean slave trade. Finally, Hansberry’s Raisin contains a scene that garners little or no critical attention, but it is pivotal to understanding the men within the text. Ruth’s husband, Walter Lee, is tired of being called a “boy” by his white employers. His wife is a thirty-five-year-old mother who works as a maid and is called “gal” by her white, female employer. This demonstrates why Black women traditionally reject white feminism. White women were often patriarchal and condescending to the Black women they employed as domestics. Yet, Ruth’s dilemma is not seen as urgent as Walter Lee’s and it is deftly captured by Hansberry in one sentence. Hansberry, like Truth and Stewart and other Black women writers before her makes a demand of Black men: it is crucial that Black men evaluate the type of tyrannical, misogynist models of masculinity espoused by white capitalist cultures. Black people live within a race-based economy that denies Black couples the privilege of acting out “traditional” gender roles as modeled by white society, it seems irrational for Black men to internalize those roles and try to enforce them within the home. This only ever leads to disharmony in the home and sometimes personal destruction in the texts.
Chapter 6, “Out of Necessity: Black Men Evaluate Definitions of Masculinity,” returns the reader to creative literature written by Black men. This chapter presents men who are not only different geographically, but who practice three different religions. Ousmane’s character in God’s Bits of Wood is Islamic. Alexis, hilarious in General Sun, My Brother, practices Haitian voodoo even in the face of annihilation. The father of Gaines’s In My Father’s House is a Christian preacher. Each character faces a crisis which forces him to look at “traditional” definitions of masculinity that they have internalized from their religious teachings/societies and practiced all of their lives. Ousmane’s characters face an economic crisis while Alexis’s character is faced with a flood and a stigmatized disease. The father in Gaines’s narrative fathered children that he treated as trophies of his sexual conquest. The oldest son commits suicide in order to show his father the damage that gender inequality does to Black families. Each of these texts asks a central question: Are personal practices of masculinity by Black men to blame for the dysfunction of Black families and communities? It is a disconcerting concept. And while Gaines and Ousmane are rather well-known in the literary world, these texts are not taught as frequently as others produced by those authors.
The conclusion of this text returns us to Baldwin’s challenge to Black males. The social, economic, and natural disasters that plagued