“She still missed her daddy sometimes”: Black women's Post-Civil Rights father-daughter narratives

Heidi R Lewis, Purdue University

Abstract

This project examines the ways black women construct father-daughter relationships in Post-Civil Rights era literature, autobiography, and popular non-fiction. I consider how these narratives are in conversation with Civil Rights and Black Power gender ideologies that depended heavily on black women's silence and complicity. As a result, this study will provide insight into the ways that black women understand, revise, and reject patriarchal gender norms in black families. More specifically, I argue that the father-daughter relationship provides a unique context that illuminates familial circumstances that either encourage or discourage black women from transforming the way they understand and perform gender.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Patton, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|American studies|Black studies|Womens studies

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