Black Female Bodies on (Dis)play: Commodification, Reembodyment and Healing

Abstract

The articles focuses on the search for alternative models for black female identities and bodies which challenge sexualized and racialized images historically imposed onto them. To counteract this historical denigrating and traumatic legacy, three novels are especially relevant: the classic Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange (1982) and Bailey’s Café by Gloria Naylor (1992), and a more recent publication Home by Toni Morrison (2012). These novels examine those bodies and identities as sites for self-representation, empowerment and healing, both physical and psychic. Dismantling racist and sexist ideologies, these works ultimately signal the way to reconstitute black female bodies in a newly devised politics of the black body that defies the exclusion and commodification to which they have been historically subjected, and facilitates the shaping of alternative non-hegemonic identities.