63 pages • 2 hours read
Tara M. StringfellowMemphis
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Socio-Historical Context: African American Women and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the 20th Century
Black women have always been at the forefront of the struggle for racial equality and justice. Despite that their role and contributions have often been overlooked, Black women’s resilience within the civil rights and the Women’s Movement remains pivotal. Black women always highlighted the intersection of gender, race, and class for the understanding of oppression and inequality. Their activism as grassroots leaders spans several generations and defines the quest for humanity and freedom.
As early as the late 19th century, African American women founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. The organization encompassed smaller local organizations and tackled issues of racial injustice, civil rights, lynching, and Jim Crow legislation. In 1909, a group of African American women and men founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which focused on battling racial violence against Black people and fought against segregation in education. Black women were particularly active as grassroots organizers and leaders within the organization.
African American women held crucial roles in the emergence of the modern civil rights movement as demonstrators, leaders, organizers, and theorists. A turning point in the civil rights struggle was Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a bus and accept segregation in public transportation. Her act sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and helped spread demonstrations against segregation throughout the South. After that, the civil rights movement gained national momentum.
Black women’s struggles in leading grassroots efforts and voicing their experiences of oppression also led them to explore their subjectivity and create a new image for themselves. African American author Alice Walker coined the term “Womanism” in 1981 to express the African American female experience and promote the politics of Black feminism. Black feminism focused on the complex intersectional oppression of Black women and promoted the understanding of systemic racism, sexism, and classism.
Authorial Context: Tara M. Stringfellow
Tara M. Stringfellow was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She is a former attorney, author, and poet. Stringfellow earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and African American Studies from Northwestern University followed by a law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law. Following her career as an attorney, Stringfellow decided to pursue a writing career. She worked as an English teacher and returned to Northwestern University to complete an MFA in poetry and fiction. In Memphis, Stringfellow traces the traumatic legacy of racism and violence in America while also drawing from her own family experiences and her admiration of Black women.
Storytelling was always important for the author. Her father is a Marine and a poet who read to her as a child. Because she was a Black woman, he told her that she must write better than celebrated white male writers. Her mother was always singing and relating stories about the South, the civil rights movement, and the family’s past. Stringfellow’s grandfather was the first Black detective in the department of homicide in Memphis. While his wife was pregnant, he was found murdered and his body was unrecognizable. Her grandmother was the first Black nurse at Mount Zion Baptist Hospital in Memphis. The family was impacted by events of racial violence in the mid-20th century like the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, where four little Black girls died, Emmett Till’s murder in Chicago, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. Stringfellow grew up understanding the trauma and the grief but also the resilience of Black people. Her fiction is an attempt to celebrate the power of the African American community and give voice to their unknown stories.
