Koritha Mitchell Livres

Exploring the complex relationship between black women's roles in the home and their citizenship, the author examines how these women have historically navigated stereotypes while striving for respectability. By analyzing literary works from notable African American authors, the book highlights the persistent challenges faced by black women, from the slave era to contemporary times, as they embody various domestic identities. The narrative reveals the tension between traditional domesticity and societal marginalization, illustrating how home life has been both a refuge and a battleground for asserting dignity and rights.

Koritha Mitchell analyzes canonical texts by and about African American women to lay bare the hostility these women face as they invest in traditional domesticity. Instead of the respectability and safety granted white homemakers, black women endure pejorative labels, racist governmental policies, attacks on their citizenship, and aggression meant to keep them in "their place." Tracing how African Americans define and redefine success in a nation determined to deprive them of it, Mitchell plumbs the works of Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, and others. These artists honor black homes from slavery and post-emancipation through the Civil Rights era to "post-racial" America. Mitchell follows black families asserting their citizenship in domestic settings while the larger society and culture marginalize and attack them, not because they are deviants or failures but because they meet American standards. Powerful and provocative, From Slave Cabins to the White House illuminates the links between African American women's homemaking and citizenship in history and across literature.