Читать книгу Black Women's Health - Michele Tracy Berger - Страница 7

Black Women’s Health explores the real-life meanings and everyday practices of health (i.e., mental, physical, emotional, and sexual) for the African American mothers and daughters whose narratives comprise the research.

The book draws from extensive fieldwork conducted with African American mothers and their adolescent daughters ages 12–18 in North Carolina pertaining to their discussions about health, sexuality, intimacy, and transitions to “womanhood” in a variety of contexts. My mixed-methods approach yields rich data that include interviews, participant observation, and focus groups. Focus groups help contribute to micro-theory.3 In this case, micro-theory draws on multiple concepts to reveal patterns of intergenerational health practices and communication. The conversations presented in this volume take us beyond the statistics that simply collapse this group’s experience into figures alone. By portraying the complexities of mothers’ and daughters’ daily negotiations of health realities, Black Women’s Health presents an original collection of narratives that offer new dimensions of understanding how health is conceptualized, discussed, and practiced within this particular group.

This methodological framework draws from a Black feminist and intersectional theoretical orientation to situate Black women’s and girls’ health. Black Women’s Health is thus the first scholarly book to treat the health status of African American mothers and daughters as integrally linked. Through a focus on women’s and girls’ narratives of health, and how they communicate with each other about the politics and practices of health, Black Women’s Health probes the various ways in which African American mothers discuss these vital issues with their daughters, and how their daughters co-construct, interpret, and resist maternal and cultural narratives of health, sexuality, and racial identity. These direct accounts highlight how African American women and girls navigate their health and intimate relationships, as well as the various health inequalities rooted in the racism, sexism, and class marginality they experience.

Black Women’s Health empirically extends existing scholarship by examining the range of communicative strategies that structure mother and daughter experiences of health and sexuality. Black Women’s Health intervenes with a theoretical framework of intersectionality and Black feminist theory that seeks to situate a specific group of African American mothers’ and daughters’ health experiences in a southern milieu. A particular focus of the book is how African American mothers grapple with their personal health and sexual health histories and their daughters’ health. In addition, the work is grounded in the standpoints of African American mothers and daughters and explores broad themes of intimacy, love, and relationships.

The framing questions of the book include: What can we learn by examining the health narratives of African American mothers and daughters? How do these health narratives present the multiple layers of African American mothers’ and daughters’ experiences of health, sexuality, intimacy, relationships, and risk for HIV/AIDS? And how does the sociological concept of “linked lives” as applied to health illuminate African American mother and daughter health experiences? 4

Black Women’s Health argues for understanding the importance of intergenerational dialogue between mothers and their adolescent daughters about health. Health is broadly defined and emerges from participants’ definitions. It tackles both groups’ concerns about their health and the health inequalities that are embedded in their daily lives. It also reveals the contemporary and ongoing struggles African American girls encounter on the path to developing healthy lives and intimate relationships. These kinds of conversations about health and sexuality between mothers and daughters have pointed implications for how daughters understand and respond to health risks, particularly for HIV and other STDs, and chronic health issues including obesity and diabetes.

Through a focus on communication, the book reveals the processes by which some African American mothers understand and shape the health trajectories for their daughters. This book demonstrates the multiple and conflicting messages about health that African American girls navigate at the critical point of adolescence. It also pays particular attention to the barriers to health that both mothers and daughters face. It highlights the ways some African American mothers use gendered scripts to engage daughters’ sexual health, and how these scripts impact their daughters’ understanding of their own health and health practices. This research reveals that some African American mothers may struggle with providing accurate and helpful sexual health information to their daughters, despite their overall desire to do so. Additionally, many mothers have not had an opportunity to process their own possible regret or challenges about their own sexual history, which may contribute to sending contradictory messages to their daughters about sexual intimacy.