Senses of Place: The Black Community in Alice Childress's Wedding Band

Abstract

Abstract: Alice Childress's Wedding Band (1966), set in an unnamed Black South Carolina community in 1918, dwells upon Julia's loneliness, caused by her interracial love, which is forbidden by the state's law against miscegenation. Julia's anxiety about being transgressive fosters her desire to belong to a community characterized by Black women's culture and their sense of place. Her quest for a place in society highlights the segregated community's need for a specifically Black space. Wedding Band complicates the interlocking system of oppression by addressing the notion of place and also demonstrates that Black women are not passive in respect to their surroundings.