Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction

Black Women Writing Under Segregation

Eve Dunbar

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English

University of Minnesota Press
12 February 2025

Literature: history & criticism; Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Social & cultural history; Gender studies: women; Ethnic studies

Radical Black feminist refusal through the works of mid-twentieth-century African American women writers

Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction offers new and insightful readings of African American women's writings in the 1930s1950s, illustrating how these writers centered Black women's satisfaction as radical resistance to the false and incomplete promise of liberal racial integration. Eve Dunbar examines the writings of Ann Petry, Dorothy West, Alice Childress, and Gwendolyn Brooks to show how these women explored self-fulfillment over normative and sanctioned models of national belonging.

Paying close attention to literary moments of disruption, miscommunication, or confusion rather than ease, assimilation, or mutual understanding around race and gender, Dunbar tracks these writers' dissatisfaction with American race relations. She shows how Petry, West, Childress, and Brooks redeploy the idea of monstrous work to offer potential modalities for registering Black women's capacity to locate satisfaction within the domestic and interpersonal.

While racial integration may satisfy the national idea of equality and inclusion, it has not met the long-term needs of Black people's quest for equity. Dunbar responds, demonstrating how these mid-century women offer new blueprints for Black life by creating narrative models for radical satisfaction: Black women's completeness, joy, and happiness outside the bounds of normative racial inclusion.

By: Eve Dunbar
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 10mm
Weight: 255g
ISBN: 9781517917876
ISBN 10: 1517917875
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 12 February 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Eve Dunbar is the Jean Webster Professor of English at Vassar College. She is author of Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers between the Nation and the World and coeditor of African American Literature in Transition: 19301940.

Reviews for Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation

"""Eve Dunbar’s exploration of radical satisfaction provides a new way to conceptualize Black female subjectivity outside the limits of racial inclusion. In a series of bold, incisive readings, she analyzes examples of agency and joy that defy conventional narratives of progress. This book provides a necessary reorientation to the power of monstrous work and satisfaction."" —Stephanie Li, author of Ugly White People: Writing Whiteness in Contemporary America "