Wake Up Little Susie

Rickie Solinger

Psychology Press, 2000 - African American single mothers - 344 pages

The legendary Greek figure Orpheus was said to have possessed magical powers capable of moving all living and inanimate things through the sound of his lyre and voice. Over time, the Orphic theme has come to indicate the power of music to unsettle, subvert, and ultimately bring down oppressive realities in order to liberate the soul and expand human life without limits. The liberating effect of music has been a particularly important theme in twentieth-century African American literature.

The nine original essays in Black Orpheus examines the Orphic theme in the fiction of such African American writers as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Nathaniel Mackey, Sherley Anne Williams, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison. The authors discussed in this volume depict music as a mystical, shamanistic, and spiritual power that can miraculously transform the realities of the soul and of the world. Here, the musician uses his or her music as a weapon to shield and protect his or her spirituality. Written by scholars of English, music, women's studies, American studies, cultural theory, and black and Africana studies, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection ultimately explore the thematic, linguistic structural presence of music in twentieth-century African American fiction.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - wealhtheowwylfing - LibraryThing

What it meant to be pregnant and unwed in the US from 1945 to 1965. Basically, it sucked. But, it sucked for white women and black rather differently. Both were expected to be ashamed, but white women ...

WAKE UP LITTLE SUSIE: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe V. Wade

User Review  - Kirkus

In a thorough and important, if often tiresomely repetitive, study, Solinger (Women's Studies/Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) dissects the politics of female fertility in America from 1945-65, when the ...

Contents

• The Stick and the Carrot Public Meanings of Black and White Single Pregnancy in the PreRoe v Wade Era: 20
• The Making of the Matriarchy The Persistence of Biological Explanations for Black Single Pregnancy: 41
• The Girl Nobody Loved Psychological Explanations for White Single Pregnancy: 86
• Behind the Fence Maternity Homes 194565: 103
• The Disposition of Illegitimate Babies I The Postwar White Adoption Mandate: 148
• The Disposition of Illegitimate Babies II A Taxpayers Issue: 187
• The Population Bomb and the Sexual Revolution Toward Choice: 205
• The Legacy of Racialized Single Motherhood1950s and Beyond: 233
• Notes: 249
• Bibliography Essay: 304
• Index: 333

Popular passages

Page viii - It is not sexuality which haunts society, but society which haunts the body's sexuality. Sex-related differences between bodies are continually summoned as testimony to social relations and phenomena that have nothing to do with sexuality. Not only as testimony to, but also testimony for — in other words, as legitimation."41 The legitimizing function of gender works in many ways.

About the author

Rickie Solinger is also the author of The Abortionist: AWoman Against the Law and editor of Abortion Wars: A HalfCentury of Struggle, 1950-2000. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Wake Up Little Susie
• Author: Rickie Solinger
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Psychology Press, 2000
• ISBN: 0415926769, 9780415926768
• Length: 344 pages