Deconstructing Archival Debris in the Margins: How Black Women Writers Navigate Intersectional Oppression During the Authorial Identity Formation Process

Forman, Jane

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Deconstructing Archival Debris in the Margins: How Black Women Writers Navigate Intersectional Oppression During the Authorial Identity Formation Process Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/9w0324647

Abstract

This project explores the differential treatment of Black female authors due to intersectional oppression. It traces the genealogy of Black women writers being denied their authorial identity using a critical race theory approach. Each time a Black woman is disempowered at the height of her career, it invokes an intensely violent history of racialized and gendered oppression. Over the course of three chapters, this project examines how the notion of authentic authorship applies to prominent Black women who span generations, ranging from Nella Larsen to Toni Morrison to Claudine Gay. These challenges are due in large part to authorship being coded as White and male, leaving Black women more vulnerable to being denied such an identity. In addition to outlining the harm done to Black women authors, this thesis interrogates the authorities that authorize such an identity. This paper outlines how the history of citizenship in the United States, alongside formative conceptions of intellectual property rights, both rooted in the institution of slavery, set a problematic precedent whereby Black woman writers were coded as lacking the capacity to create. The guiding question for this thesis project is: to what extent should we allow archival debris from the institution of slavery to inform contemporary considerations of Black female writers? Furthermore, to what extent has the literary community fallen short by not foregrounding the injurious nature of intersectional oppression in discussions about Black women's authorial identity?

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