Danielle Procope Bell

The emotional pleasure and joy of late nineteenth-century Black girl and women readers have rarely been considered by scholars of African American literature. Through a close textual analysis of Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892), I demonstrate the usefulness of centering the interiority of Black girls and women in my reading of the novel’s domestic idealism. That is, I read the novel’s sentimental rhetoric and its romantic marriage plot as working to create and nurture feelings of joy and pleasure for Black girls and women. By imagining Black girls and women as consumers of Harper’s novel, I demonstrate the importance of decentering discourse of both anti-racism and true womanhood when analyzing Iola Leroy. In doing so, I offer unconventional readings of Iola’s near whiteness and the novel’s incorporation of sexual violence, marriage plots, and dual heroines.

Netflix’s TV Series Adolescence (2025) has brought to the mainstream the harrowing implications of Andrew Tate’s outsized influence, the manosphere, and ‘incel’ culture and discourse. Adolescence makes visible the often-invisible connection between the manosphere and the murders of girls and women. While Adolescence has enjoyed broad praise, some critics have accused the show of ‘race-swapping’ and ‘anti-white propaganda’ because it features a white boy as the murderer. While this view has been largely debunked, the need to defend Black boys from white supremacist attacks that claim they are inherently prone to violence simultaneously creates challenges for acknowledging violence against Black girls and women. I argue that acknowledging the breadth of the manosphere – and particularly, the existence of the Black manosphere – is important to combat violence against Black girls and women.

This essay analyzes anti-feminist (“Pick-Me”) Black women content creators on YouTube who exist within the Black manosphere—online spaces populated by Black men who support Black patriarchal dominance. These “Pick-Me” content creators use what I term “tactical patriarchal femininity” to attract the financial provision of an economically stable Black man and to derive income from sympathetic viewers. Tactical patriarchal femininity is an elaborate, all-consuming embodied performance that is as much about emotion work as it is about exuding conventional attractiveness and behavior that is aligned with traditional femininity. Tactical patriarchal femininity exists to combat the matrices of oppression created by capitalism, white supremacy, and institutional patriarchy. Anti-feminist Black women work in reaction to the misogynoirist material realities that victimize Black women. Ultimately, the Black manosphere’s explicit disavowal of Black women’s worth, apart from what they may provide for men in their role as a patriarchalized wife, is dangerous to all Black women—including and especially those Black women who claim anti-feminism.

Existing cultural narratives about Black motherhood impact the wellbeing of Black mothers and their children and directly influence the persistence of Black maternal health disparities. I turn to the “mammy” and “welfare queen” stereotypes because they function to concretize existing views of Black mothers as destructive, lazy, and wasteful when they direct their care and resources towards Black children. I argue that the “mammy” and “welfare queen” stereotypes work in concert with each other to dismiss the Black mother/child bond and this results in what I term the disallowing of Black mothering. I define Black mothering as Black mothers and othermothers taking care of and being emotionally and materially present for their children and able to protect and provide on their behalf. Lastly, I connect the disallowing of Black mothering with the disproportionate rate of Black maternal and infant mortality. I argue that by focusing on addressing racist and sexist cultural narratives about Black mothers, Black maternal health advocates can address one of the root causes of Black maternal health disparities—the perceived unworthiness of Black mothers having and accessing institutional and state resources.