Make Something Besides a Baby: Race, Gender, and Reproductive Science in 20th Century Black Women's Novels
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Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Rovak, Angela
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
<i>Make Something Besides a Baby: Race, Gender, and Reproductive Science in 20th Century Black Women's Novels</i> challenges the opposition between literature and science that has obscured the ways Black women write science and technology into their fiction. Since Black women have largely been excluded from the mainstream discursive space of medicine and science except as objects of study, turning to fiction has offered a powerful means to evidence, critique, and revise experiences of Black reproduction. In their novels, Black women claim authority over the state of Black reproduction and position themselves as arbiters of reproductive theory. I analyze the fixation on specific, historically contingent representations of reproductive science in Black women's fiction that reveal the inconsistencies and fissures in scientific discourse. I argue that these writers establish a Black feminist theory of reproductive science and technology that prioritizes Black women's reproductive experiences with, for instance, involuntary sterilization or surrogacy. In chapters on Nella Larsen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Fran Ross, Ntozake Shange, and Octavia Butler, I uncover the work these Black women writers do to theorize Black reproduction alongside and against cutting-edge science and technology. My project demonstrates how this literature resists the unsatisfying and often violent paradigm of scientific objectivity even as it articulates alternative epistemologies of scientific thought.
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Keywords
20th Century Literature, African American Literature, Black Feminism, Reproductive Justice, Women's Literature, Women's Studies