Standing Up and Speaking Out: African American Women's Narrative Legacy

Abstract

Based on extensive excerpts from texts that are a part of a larger study of elderly African American women's oral narratives, the following paper examines the manner in which African American women speak out about and suppress accounts of racism and sexism in their professional and private lives. The narratives suggest that the very act of telling their own life stories represents a break with `tradition' and is indeed a form of speaking out. Putting into words their philosophies, experiences and feelings means that the fictional culture and history that has victimized African Americans ultimately will be reconstructed. The research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation.