Mothering and Self-Care While Black in the Age of COVID

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of Black mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic through a lens of self-care. As a group of people particularly impacted by persistent gender inequality, the economic and health disparities laid bare by the pandemic, as well as the structural racism that underscores these inequities, Black mothers' self-care emerges as an important topic of conversation as women everywhere confront the challenges of parenting, running households, and attending to their own well-being. Communicated through a collection of short case studies, this piece presents a broad range of narratives that demonstrate the way Black mothers engage the practice of yoga to attend to their needs and the needs of their families. Presented with statistical and analytical context, this piece demonstrates the ways yoga supports Black mothers and how it falls short.

“Roll Out My Mat and Take Up Space”: A Study of Black Women’s Resistance to Yoga’s White Normativity

“…In addition, Sabrina Strings along with Tria Blu Wakpa, co-founded the first academic journal dedicated to intersectional examinations of race and yoga, which speaks to the journal's title Race and Yoga. This journal has published various studies that examine the connectedness of race and yoga (Ansari 2020;Berger 2018;Hagan 2021;Nair 2019;VanHester 2021). Adding to this canon, this article employs the theorical concept of resistance to explore how Black women navigate, and ultimately resist, the operation of anti-Blackness and white normativity that is engrained in modern US yoga studios.…”