Abstract
Until more recently than I’d like to admit, I constructed my identity in direct opposition to the image of the mammy. As a big black girl who loved to smile, I insisted on playing the father, the neighbor, the gardener—anything but the mother—in games of house. When bandanas were fly in high school, I made sure to rock mine in outlandish neon greens, underscored by purple extensions and lipstick the color of blood. Every chance I got, I made sure the second signal the world got from me—after the unmissable sign of my size—was the clear message: I will not take care of you. To this day, I sometimes suck in my bulges and harden my eyes when white toddlers gurgle at me on the bus, their mothers often looking on with ambiguously pleading smiles.
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© 2014 Claire Oberon Garcia, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and Charise Pimentel
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Sullivan, M.J. (2014). Second (and Third, and Fourth …) Helpings. In: Garcia, C.O., Young, V.A., Pimentel, C. (eds) From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Help. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137446268_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137446268_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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