Homeplace: A Site of Resistance

“"Unfortunately, though positively motivated, black mother worship extols the virtues of self-sacrifice while simultaneously implying that such a gesture is not reflective of choice and will, rather the perfect embodiment of a woman's 'natural' role. The assumption then is that the black woman who works hard to be a responsible caretaker is only doing what she should be doing. Failure to recognize the realm of choice, and the remarkable re-visioning of both woman's role and the idea of 'home' that black women consciously exercised in practice, obscures the political commitment to racial uplift, to eradicating racism, which was the philosophical core of dedication to community and home." There's a lot to think about when thinking about this essay, but at the moment I'm thinking about how bell hooks is framing Black women's homeplace-making as a radical act while white womanhood — a la 'the angel in the house — sees homemaking as an oppressive role (even when, for much of history the homemaking of white homes fell to Black women also...). And how can we think about the crumbling trad wife movement alongside bell's treatise on homeplace?”