The Ultimate Home

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-212
Author(s):  
Koritha Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
First Lady ◽  
Strong Black Woman ◽  
White House ◽  
Club Women ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
A Performance ◽  
Performance Text

This chapter analyzes, as a performance text, Michelle Obama’s public persona as first lady. Proclaiming herself Mom-in-Chief, Mrs. Obama embodied a variation of the strong black woman, and her strategies for inspiring others resembled those of black club women of the 1890s and early 1900s. Club women taught other women best practices for caring for their families and homes. They also gave advice about, and considered themselves models for, how best to style one’s hair and dress appropriately. Likewise, Mrs. Obama made deliberate choices about hair, clothes, and overall bodily presentation, and she decorated the White House in ways that continued Jacqueline Kennedy’s legacy but that also acknowledged the hostility hounding her first family because it was not white. [119 of 125 words]

White House, Black Mother: Michelle Obama and the Politics of Motherhood as First Lady

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 460-483
Author(s):  
Gloria Y. A. Ayee ◽  
Jessica D. Johnson Carew ◽  
Taneisha N. Means ◽  
Alicia M. Reyes-Barriéntez ◽  
Nura A. Sediqe
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
First Lady ◽  
White House ◽  
Michelle Obama ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn 2008, for the first time in the history of this country, a black woman became First Lady of the United States. During Barack Obama's presidency, Michelle Obama was ever present in the public eye for her advocacy on issues related to health, military families, education, and for promoting the interests of women and girls. This article contributes to ongoing scholarly discourse, as well as extensive media coverage and analysis, regarding Obama's role as wife and first lady by critically examining how the particular model of motherhood she embraced and exhibited, a model firmly rooted in the black American community, was designed to challenge negative stereotypes of black women, maternity, and families. We address the following questions in this work: How did Obama's identity as a black woman influence the policies she championed as first lady? Does Obama's mothering relate to stereotypes of black mothers and help (re)define black motherhood, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a black mater gentis or mother of the nation? Drawing on her speeches and policy initiatives, we reveal how Michelle Obama defied dominant and oppressive stereotypes of black women and mothers while simultaneously (re)defining black womanhood and motherhood for the nation.

Trauma, Binge Eating, and the "Strong Black Woman"

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Harrington ◽  
Jan Crowther ◽  
Jillian Shipherd
Keyword(s):  
Binge Eating ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Strong Black Woman

The Role of Coping in the Relationship Between Endorsement of the Strong Black Woman Schema and Depressive Symptoms Among Black Women

2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842110212
Author(s):  
Martinque K. Jones ◽  
Tanisha G. Hill-Jarrett ◽  
Kyjeila Latimer ◽  
Akilah Reynolds ◽  
Nekya Garrett ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Mental Health Outcomes ◽  
Multiple Mediation ◽  
Strong Black Woman

The Strong Black Woman (SBW) schema has been consistently linked to negative mental health outcomes among Black women. However, few have begun to explicate the mechanisms by which the endorsement of the SBW schema may influence mental health outcomes. Accordingly, the current study examined coping styles (social support, disengagement, spirituality, and problem-oriented/engagement) as mediators in the association between endorsement of the SBW schema and depressive symptoms in a sample of Black women. Data from 240 Black women ( Mage = 22.0, SD = 4.0 years) were collected assessing SBW schema endorsement, coping styles, and depressive symptoms. Parallel multiple mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS Macro. Of the four coping styles examined, disengagement coping partially mediated the association between greater endorsement of the SBW schema and greater depressive symptoms. Study findings add depth to our understanding of the association between the SBW schema and mental health outcomes and lend themselves to research and clinical implications.

Staying strong: Exploring experiences of managing emotional distress for African Caribbean women living in the UK

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Graham ◽  
Victoria Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Emotional Distress ◽  
Emotional Wellbeing ◽  
Strong Black Woman ◽  
Caribbean Women ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
African Caribbean ◽  
The Uk

The “strong Black woman” (SBW) is a Western cultural stereotype that depicts African-heritage women as strong, self-reliant, independent, yet nurturing and self-sacrificing. US research indicates that this stereotype negatively impacts the emotional wellbeing of African-heritage women, while also allowing them to survive in a racist society. UK research has documented the significance of this stereotype in relation to African Caribbean women’s experience of depression around the time of childbirth and “attachment separation and loss”. However, research is yet to explore how UK African Caribbean women make sense of and negotiate the SBW stereotype in relation to their emotional wellbeing more broadly. Using five focus groups, with a total of 18 women, this research explored how these women experienced and managed emotional distress in relation to the SBW stereotype. The importance of “being strong” consistently underpinned the participants’ narratives. However, this requirement for strength often negatively impacted their ability to cope effectively with their distress, leading them to manage it in ways that did little to alleviate it and sometimes increased it. This study offers important implications for understanding the experiences of emotional distress for UK African Caribbean women.

Becoming Strong: Sociocultural Experiences, Mental Health, & Black Girls' Strong Black Woman Schema Endorsement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nkemka Anyiwo ◽  
Alexis G. Stanton ◽  
Lanice R. Avery ◽  
Donte L. Bernard ◽  
Jasmine A. Abrams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Strong Black Woman ◽  
Sociocultural Experiences

From Slave Cabins to the White House

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koritha Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Reading Practice ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
White House ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Public Persona

This book argues for a new reading practice. Rather than approach art and literature from marginalized groups as examples of protest or as responses to “dominant” culture, it demonstrates the power of reading through the lens of achievement, using case studies from black expressive culture. Even while bombarded with racist and sexist violence, African Americans remain focused on defining, redefining, and pursuing success. By examining canonical examples of black women’s cultural production, this study reveals how African Americans keep each other oriented toward accomplishment through an ongoing, multivalent community conversation. Analyzing widely taught and discussed works from the 1860s to the present (via Michelle Obama’s public persona), the book traces “homemade citizenship”—the result of practices of making-oneself-at-home, practices of affirming oneself while knowing violence will answer one’s achievements and assertions of belonging. The texts examined include Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes; Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868), Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892), Pauline Hopkins’s Contending Forces (1900), Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Alice Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness (1969), Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), and Michelle Obama’s first lady persona. [220 of 225 words]

A Second hand Kind of Terror

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha Gaines
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
House Staff ◽  
The Political ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
White House ◽  
Black Womanhood ◽  
Black Sexuality ◽  
John Howard ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Chapter Three considers the political, racial, and social crises plaguing the late 1960s by reading Soul Sister, Grace Halsell’s 1969 memoir. A freelance journalist and a White House staff writer for the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, Halsell was also a protégé of John Howard Griffin, who famously passed for black in 1959. While previous scholarship on Griffin has wrestled with his place as an enduring icon of racial empathy, this chapter details Griffin’s previously unknown mentorship of Halsell. Bolstered by extensive archival research, this chapter demonstrates how Halsell prepared for her performance of black womanhood by relying exclusively on Griffin’s instruction without any advice from black women. The chapter also situates Halsell’s blackness within important discussions around the contentious relationship between racial equality and 2nd wave feminism. Ultimately, Halsell’s six-months as a black woman in Harlem and Mississippi during the burgeoning black power movement ironically reveals grotesque assumptions about black sexuality, authenticity, and class.

Eating on the Run

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Miller
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Food Preparation ◽  
First Lady ◽  
White House ◽  
Prepared Food

This chapter explores how presidential food preparation changes when the president travels to a destination, and stays away from the White House for an extended period of time. This chapter focuses on cooks who prepared food in a variety of contexts: the presidential train, the presidential yacht and Air Force One. This chapter chronologically profiles: railroad cooks Joe Brown, John Smeades and Delefasse Green; Elizabeth "Lizzie" McDuffie, Daisy Bonner, Ronald L. Jackson, Charlie Redden, Lee Simmons and Wanda Joell. Through their experiences, this chapter illuminates the strategies that presidents would pursue to get the comfort foods they loved and take a temporary break from the diets imposed upon them by the First Lady or the presidential physician. The chapter also details how the White House Mess was created and initially staffed. This chapter includes recipes for Daisy Bonner's cheese soufflé, Hawaiian French toast, and jerk chicken pita pizza.

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