Beyond poto mitan: Challenging the “Strong Black Woman” archetype and allowing space for tenderness

Abstract

In this article, we contend that the “strong Black woman” archetype constricts expressions of Black womanhood and girlhood and thus limits individual and collective liberation. We maintain that strength need not preclude tenderness, highlighting two forms: wounded tenderness—a raw and aching feeling pointing to the vulnerability of human beings—and liberated tenderness, a practice of meeting woundedness with embodied awareness and gentleness. We foreground the concept of poto mitan to illustrate how the “strong Black woman” archetype upholds virtues of strength at the expense of tenderness, thus taking up Faye Harrison's call to theorize from “ex‐centric sites.” Translated as “center posts,” poto mitan describes the architecture of spaces for traditional ancestor worship and conventionally refers to Haitian women's central role as pillars of the family and community. We begin this article by discussing the limits of this discourse within feminist scholarship and activism. Second, we examine how this discourse both engenders and limits liberation for Haitian rural women. By concluding with “tenderness as method,” we argue that feminist anthropologists working with Black women must not only attune themselves to how discourses and performances of strength may occlude liberation but also call on our own vulnerability to allow space for liberated tenderness.

Birthing hostages: Haitian women's stories of maternal medicine, debt, and hospital detention

“…Though this trope praises women for supporting their communities, it also burdens Haitian women with tremendous economic, spiritual, and familial loads. Meanwhile, women are often expected to remain silent about their own injustices (Dubuisson & Schuller, 2022; Lamour, 2021). Oral history is a vibrant method that feminist scholars have employed to un‐silence stories of resistance in Haitian life by relying on Haitian women's own multidimensional voices (Figure 1).…”

“…Oral history is a vibrant method that feminist scholars have employed to un‐silence stories of resistance in Haitian life by relying on Haitian women's own multidimensional voices (Figure 1). Their stories challenge archetypes of the suffering, miserable Haitian woman, or the inhumanly strong Black woman (Dubuisson & Schuller, 2022; Lamour, 2021; Sanders, 2013).…”