The Persistent Joy of Black Mothers: Jennifer C. Nash

This article from The Atlantic details how Black mothers are characterized throughout American history as symbols of crisis, trauma, and grief, and yet consistently reject those narratives through world-making of their own. It mentions Duke professor and feminist theorist Jennifer C. Nash new book, Birthing Black Mothers. Black motherhood, she has written, has become a “political position made visible (only) because of its proximity to death.” The Black mother as a figure, Nash argues, exists as a kind of public symbol, synonymous with pain.

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