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    Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength
    Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength
    Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength
    Ebook410 pages5 hours

    Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength

    By Chanequa Walker-Barnes

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    About this ebook

    Black women are strong. At least that's what everyone says and how they are constantly depicted. But what, exactly, does this strength entail? And what price do Black women pay for it? In this book, the author, a psychologist and pastoral theologian, examines the burdensome yoke that the ideology of the Strong Black Woman places upon African American women. She demonstrates how the three core features of the ideology--emotional strength, caregiving, and independence--constrain the lives of African American women and predispose them to physical and emotional health problems, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety. She traces the historical, social, and theological influences that resulted in the evolution and maintenance of the Strong Black Woman, including the Christian church, R & B and hip-hop artists, and popular television and film. Drawing upon womanist pastoral theology and twelve-step philosophy, she calls upon pastoral caregivers to aid in the healing of African American women's identities and crafts a twelve-step program for Strong Black Women in recovery.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateJun 19, 2014
    ISBN9781630871925
    Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength
    Author

    Chanequa Walker-Barnes

    Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes is a clinical psychologist and professor of practical theology and pastoral care at Columbia Theological Seminary. Her work focuses upon writing and ministering to clergy and faith-based activists, and supporting women of color engaged in Christian social justice activism. She is the author of I Bring the Voices of My People and Too Heavy a Yoke. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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    • 5/5
      Author is a published author, psychologist, and pastoral theologian in multiple positions of authority, and she thought about her accomplishments, and realized "I was lonely." This launched a "nuanced" -- uh, quite orthodox "Trinitarian" -- examination of how African American women live and are depicted by a racist hegemoniacal society. Fairly certain this work was used in the "pirate" theatre. Wynn: "Nudity has often been a tool for white feminists to reclaim their autonomy from the male gaze, however that has not been the same for the Black female body. Historically and presently, while she has been degendered, she has also been hypersexualized to allow for her body to become a tool for production and to erase her credibility in claims of violence. Marian Meyers utilizes Hill Collins’s and Davis’s theories on the mythology of anti-woman violence in ways that suggest that due to the characterization of the Black male as highly sexual, deviant, and beast, the Black female, as his counterpart, engages in beastiality. Thus, she is regarded as animal, which contributes to her victimization in the act of violence physically and by the state. She is then deemed un-rapable. Moreover, without the representation of Black femaleness within the Pirate Party performance, the Black woman is not seen as a legitimate victim of violence and cannot use nudity as a form of power like white women."

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