The Politics of Black Domesticity in Martin R. Delany's Blake, or the Huts of America

Abstract

abstract:This article examines the political significance, and the limitations, of the representation of the Black patriarchal figure in Martin R. Delany's Blake, or the Huts of America, and how the (re)writing of Black domesticity is central to the novel's blueprint for Black citizenship. While Delany's novel imagines a political coalition founded upon a Black domestic order, the representation of the Black patriarchy delimits Black female agency as it also reemphasizes the gendered hierarchy within domesticity.