2026 Theses Doctoral

Burdened Becomings: Black Girlhood, Temporal Constraint, and the Literary Makings of Something Else to Be

Banks, Margaret K.

Burdened Becomings: Black Girlhood, Temporal Constraint, and the Literary Makings of Something Else to Be argues that late 20th century literature written by black women uses black girlhood to explore alternate forms of time. Through readings that use black critical, feminist, and queer theory, I argue that the works, Ntozake Shange’s Betsey Brown (1985), Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother (1996), Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), and Toni Cade Bambara’s short story collection, Gorilla My Love (1992), showcase four different forms of temporality adopted by their black girl characters – a stolen time, kenotic time, speculative time, and waiting time.

Within those temporalities, the narratives seek to expand what I term black girlhood’s temporal constraint, or the formulation’s tethers to the violence of the plantation. Examining the temporality of black girlhood reveals the intensity of the form’s constraint, informing my caution to the burgeoning field of Black Girlhood Studies against sentimental or redemptive narratization of black girlhood. Instead, I argue for a method of reading and studying black girlhood that follows the black girl characters into their alternative temporalities, which might lead us off the edge of the page, indeed, off this very world itself.