
Refusing to Be Made Whole
Disability in Black Women's Writing
Anna LaQuawn Hinton(Author)
University Press of Mississippi
Published on 4. March 2025
Book
Hardback
277 pages
978-1-4968-5503-9 (ISBN)
Description
In Refusing to Be Made Whole: Disability in Black Women's Writing, author Anna LaQuawn Hinton examines how contemporary Black women writers present becoming disabled as a traumatic and violent experience of Black womanhood. Nevertheless, Black women embrace disabled Black womanhood by turning to Africanist spiritual understandings of wholeness, which view debilitating injury and illness as not only physical but also spiritual, not just an individual problem but a symptom of discord in the community. Black women use these belief systems to reimagine healing in ways that make space for a variety of bodymindspirits. Hinton maintains that this is not only a major theme in contemporary Black women's writing but that it also shapes the formal elements characteristic of the Black women's literary tradition.
Refusing to Be Made Whole analyzes texts published after the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, focusing particularly on the late 1970s onward when Black women's writing flourished. Through the lens of writings by authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Sapphire, and Sarah E. Wright, Hinton addresses prominent critical discourses within Black feminist literary studies. Hinton approaches the intersections of Africanist spirituality, race, gender, class, and disability, conversations about representation, community, motherhood, and sexuality through a Black feminist disability studies framework. Refusing to Be Made Whole embraces the complex and multifaceted nature of Black women's writing, arguing that through this collision of race, gender, and spirituality, Black women writers speak healing and wellness into their readers' lives and their own.
Refusing to Be Made Whole analyzes texts published after the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, focusing particularly on the late 1970s onward when Black women's writing flourished. Through the lens of writings by authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Sapphire, and Sarah E. Wright, Hinton addresses prominent critical discourses within Black feminist literary studies. Hinton approaches the intersections of Africanist spirituality, race, gender, class, and disability, conversations about representation, community, motherhood, and sexuality through a Black feminist disability studies framework. Refusing to Be Made Whole embraces the complex and multifaceted nature of Black women's writing, arguing that through this collision of race, gender, and spirituality, Black women writers speak healing and wellness into their readers' lives and their own.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Jackson
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paper over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
417 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4968-5503-9 (9781496855039)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
03/2025
Princeton University Press
€29.49
Available for download
Person
Anna LaQuawn Hinton is assistant professor of disability studies and Black literature and culture in the English Department at the University of North Texas. She has published in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies and CLA Journal, as well as The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body and The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive Justice and Literature.