Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

7-2025

School/College

College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences (COLABS)

Degree Name

MA in English

Committee Chairperson

Dr. Michon Benson-Marsh

Committee Member 1

Dr. Charlene Taylor-Evans

Committee Member 2

Dr. Iris Lancaster-Lawson

Committee Member 3

Dr. Michael Zeitler

Keywords

Racism, The American Dream, Black Womanhood, Religion, and Identity

Abstract

My thesis illustrates the components of Black womanhood within Sula by Toni Morrison and The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw through the political theories of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, by Melissa V. Harris-Perry. These three works reiterate the multifacetedness of Black identity, specifically Black women in the United States of America. Through textual analysis of these works I examine the stereotypes, struggles, and experiences of motherhood, spirituality, and identity within each work and how slavery and racism impact many African American women. In Sula, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, and Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, these works are trying to navigate being Black, a female, and an American. Through fiction, Morrison and Philyaw accurately depicts the daily lives of Black mothers, wives, daughters, siblings, etc. All works explore how African American women impacted by the American Dream socially, spiritually, politically, and emotionally. Various women characters in both works of fiction and Harris-Perry’s research exemplify each of these elements of Black womanhood. Throughout each chapter, I highlight the lives of various fictional Black women characters and how Melissa V. Harris Perry’s works substantiates the fictional narratives, thus making Morrison and Philyaw’s works, in many ways, biographical. Most importantly, each chapter illustrates the complexities of identity and autonomy for Black women whose lives reaffirm how the American Dream is fundamentally exclusionary.

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