“I ain’ mad now and I know taint no use to lie”: honesty, anger, and emotional resistance in formerly enslaved women’s 1930s’ testimony

Wilson, B. R. (2021) “I ain’ mad now and I know taint no use to lie”: honesty, anger, and emotional resistance in formerly enslaved women’s 1930s’ testimony. American Nineteenth Century History, 22 (3). pp. 307-326. ISSN 1466-4658 doi: 10.1080/14664658.2021.2022543

Abstract/Summary

This article argues that racialized and gendered emotional standards shaped formerly enslaved women’s decisions surrounding speaking honestly about slavery during their interviews in the 1930s. Scholars have demonstrated that Jim Crow racial dynamics impacted on interviewees’ decisions to speak openly, but few have considered the constraining impact of society’s emotional standards. For the three women considered in this article, however, speaking candidly about their memories of slavery was intimately connected with expressing anger about these experiences. Before they gave detailed descriptions of their experiences, they had to consider the constraints white society placed on Black Americans’ expressions of anger, alongside specific restrictions on Black women’s anger when speaking about white violence. When these women made considered decisions to speak more honestly and transgress these emotional standards they, therefore, undertook a form of “emotional resistance” that must be recognized alongside the intellectual agency they displayed.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/104452
Identification Number/DOI	10.1080/14664658.2021.2022543
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > History
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
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