Professional Documents
Culture Documents
You Have To Show Strength An Exploration of Gender Race and Depression
You Have To Show Strength An Exploration of Gender Race and Depression
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27640945?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Gender and Society
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
"YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH"
An Exploration of Gender,
Race, and Depression
TAMARA BEAUBOEUF-LAFONTANT
DePauw University
Investigating the possible overlap between depressed and presumably strong Black
women, this article maintains that women's experiences of depression are both gendered
and raced. A review of clinical and popular literatures examining Black women 's experi
ences of depression as well as findings from an interview study with a nonclinical sample
of 44 Black women suggest that the discourse of being strong may normalize a distress
inducing level of selflessness and powerlessness among such women. Implications of this
study include the need to consider the racially specific ways in which women are placed
at risk for and experience depression.
Women'sdepression
overrepresentation
has led to interrogationsin experiencing
of the gendered facets of and
mental being treated for
distress. Particularly highlighted have been societal perceptions of women
as irrational and biologically predisposed to particular mental problems
relative to men (Busfield 1996; Chesler 1982; Martin 1987), the gendered
expectations attendant on being a so-called good woman that may place
women at increased risk for such distress (Crowley Jack 1991; Nazroo,
Edwards, and Brown 1998; Walters, Avotri, and Charles 2003), and gender
norms that generally encourage women to express discontent and strain
through help-seeking rather than acting-out behavior (Falicov 2003). This
work links depression to disempowering gendered social relations.
The bulk of theoretical and empirical sociological work on depression has
focused on the experiences of white, middle-class women (Brooks-Bertram
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author would like to acknowledge the thoughtful and construc
tive feedback from the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Christine Williams, as well as
the ongoing encouragement of Dr. Thomas S. Dickinson.
28
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 29
1996; Brown, Brody, and Stoneman 2000; Cannon, Higginbotham, and Guy
1989). However, sexism is only one of many structural risk factors for
depression, which include poverty, low education, racism, immigration, and
exposure to violence. Thus, less structurally empowered women?poor
women, women of color, and immigrants?largely experience depression at
rates equal to or in excess of their white, middle-class counterparts (Barbee
1994; Edge and Rogers 2005; Schreiber 1996; Schreiber, Noerager
Stern, and Wilson 1998; http://orwh.od.nih.gov/pubs/wocEnglish2002.pdf).
Approximately one-quarter of American women will experience depression
in their lives, and about 9 percent are depressed at any time. Although 20 per
cent of depressed Americans receive treatment, as few as 7 percent of Black
women do so (Mitchell and Herring 1998, 4). Such findings suggest the need
to investigate depression as a gendered as well as a raced phenomenon.
To understand the sociocultural context surrounding Black women and
their experiences of depression, this article draws on two literatures?a
feminist, conceptualization of depression as a sustained experience of silenc
ing thoughts and desires deemed at odds with normative femininity, and
Black feminist critiques of "being strong" as culturally specific feminine
expectation placed on Black women. The article then reports on a qualitative
study undertaken to examine the possible continuum between "normal" and
depressed Black women. The research specifically explored how being
strong encourages the embrace and reproduction of particular attitudes and
behaviors among Black women, and the signs of self-silencing that many
interviewees revealed as they struggled to adhere to the mandate of strength.
A FEMINIST CONCEPTUALIZATION OF
DEPRESSION: THE SILENCING PARADIGM
Seeking to explain the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of
depression, feminist theorists and researchers have argued that its incidence is
tied to normative femininity rather than to aspects of women's biological
makeup as the medical model asserts (Crowley Jack 1991, 1999a; Schreiber
1998, 2001; Schreiber and Hartrick 2002; Stoppard 2000). While not denying
a biological basis to depression, feminist scholars focus on the social realities
that have largely been underappreciated and undertheorized in the etiology of
such mental distress. Thus, in the silencing paradigm, much attention is placed
on prevailing standards of feminine goodness. That is, normative expectations
for women insist that they be overly attuned to others' needs, often at great
cost to their own goals, desires, and feelings. In the process of living up to
these cultural images, women may engage in self-silencing as they keep
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
30 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
important aspects of their experiences hidden from those around them. They
fear that significant others will not accept their discourse-discrepant feelings,
thoughts, and needs (Crowley Jack 1991, 1999a, 1999b).
The silencing paradigm maintains that depression is a psychosocial
process in which women "mourn" a self that has become "submerged,
excluded, or weakened" under relationships that they are socialized to view
as central to their social acceptance and critical to their personal well-being
(Crowley Jack 1991, 30). The paradigm further asserts that while standards
of goodness "vary by gender, ethnicity, and social context," they typically are
drawn from cultural discourses that, once internalized, exert a moral force
that judges and condemns those thoughts and feelings that women experi
ence as authentic and grounded in their actual experiences (Crowley Jack
1999a, 223). The onset of depressive episodes, then, is essentially a period in
which women become voiceless or fractured (Schreiber 1998) from doubt
ing and repressing private thoughts that are at odds with the forms of femi
ninity that they are pressured to take on to be considered good women
(Crowley Jack 2003). Within the silencing paradigm, recovery from depres
sion becomes a process of r?int?gration, redefinition, and resistance during
which women critically sift through cultural messages to determine which
they will embrace and which others they will reject as "the not me" (Schreiber
1996). Mental health and Wellness therefore depend on a woman's realizing
that the discursive sociocultural representation of her womanhood fails to
incorporate her reality. Although largely developed from the accounts of
white, North American women, the silencing paradigm of depression pre
sents a trajectory from normative womanhood to mental distress that could
incorporate a diversity of gendered experiences. To this end, the next section
identifies the discourse of "being strong" as a potentially critical component
of how Black women experience gender and depression.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 31
Black women and viewed, correctly, as hegemonic ruses for limiting their
worldviews and life chances (Hill Collins 2000; Mitchell and Herring 1998).
During the past 30 years, the concept of a strong Black woman has gar
nered attention among Black feminists as yet another problematic controlling
image that, unlike the others, has high status within both Black communities
and the larger society (Gillespie 1984; hooks 1981; Irvin Painter 1997;
Morgan 1999; Scott 1991; Townsend Gilkes 2001; Wallace [1978] 1990).
The idea of strength is typically viewed as an honorable alternative amid the
denigrating stereotypes generated by the larger society. Foregrounding Black
women's survival of enslavement and continued socioeconomic marginal
ization, the strength discourse gathers its authority not from empirical inves
tigation but from contrasting Black women to normatively feminine, white,
middle-class women. In this contrast, historical figures such as S?journer
Truth and Harriet Tubman, as well as Black women generally, acquire an
iconic quality in lay and academic imaginations.
I argue that the construct of strength is rooted in a set of problematic
assumptions: that strong Black women are the stark and deviant opposites
of weak and appropriately feminine white women, that strength is a nat
ural quality of Black women and a litmus test for their womanhood, and
that being strong accurately characterizes Black women's motivations and
behaviors. To question strength as a social construct is to investigate
whose interests it serves, to ask what other qualities may co-exist with it,
and to be open to commonalities among as well as differences between
Black women and women from other ethnic groups. It is to explore the
social processes that often depict Black women as liberated from tradi
tional white norms of femininity while such women continue to experi
ence poverty, violence, and illness at rates that exceed those of their
so-called fragile white sisters.
Despite often trenchant critiques of the image and discourse of strength
(Gillespie 1984; Morgan 1999; Neale Hurston 1937; Wallace [1978] 1990),
little empirical work exists that identifies the impact of these expectations
on contemporary Black women. Significantly, however, a growing clinical
literature describes and implicates strength as a problematic discourse of
gender within its accounts of depression among Black women.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
32 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
For many of us, life is similar to doing hard time. Like prisoners on a chain
gang, day in and day out, we are driven by raw survival. We saw our mothers
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 33
and grandmothers do their time, and believe our lot will be the same. No
hope for release now, no hope for it later.
Doing hard time requires a lot of toughness, and we imagine that we
have plenty of that. Aren't we all Super Black Women? But that image, as
I've said, is as much a curse as it is a blessing. It drives us to meet our oblig
ations and to produce, but along with keeping us busy, it keeps us numb
enough to shut out the inner voices of pain, rejection, and rage.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
34 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
community: "'Girl, you've been hanging out with too many white folk';
'What do you have to be depressed about? If our people could make it
through slavery, we can make it through anything'; 'Take your troubles to
Jesus, not no damn psychiatrist'" (1998, 21). Thus, the discourses of
strength and depression?the first emphasizing Black women's distinctive
ness from white women, the second constructing such distress as largely a
white women's problem?reinforce each other to deny both the existence
and experience of depression among Black women.
Taken together, these accounts strongly implicate the sociocultural dis
course of being strong as setting the scene not only for depression but for
its denial, and as occasioning a denial not only in the Black community
and the larger society but among Black women themselves. The linking of
depression with the discourse of strength resonates with feminist asser
tions of the continuum between emotional distress and normative white,
middle-class femininity. However, as suggested earlier in this article, lit
tle empirical work?beyond analyses of personal experiences?examines
the normative ideals of Black femininity to reveal how being strong takes
form in the lives and minds of Black women. In an effort to examine the
possible continuum between normative and distressed Black femininity,
subsequent sections of this article report on a qualitative study focused on
exploring the presence and implications of the strength discourse in a non
clincal sample of Black women.
METHOD
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 35
experts who could inform me about how Black women experience their
lives. Consequently, I took an "active" and "Socratic" approach to the
interviewing to "uncover assumptions, to make explicit" their viewpoints
and knowledge (Bellah et al. 1985, 304, 305). Despite my shared racial
designation with the women, I still encountered some hesitation among
them as they spoke about the painful and hidden aspects of living up to the
image of strength. However, a few women noted that what they did share
with me was due to our common experiences as Black women.
The interviews began with the women discussing the first three traits
that came to mind when thinking about being a Black woman. Subsequent
interview questions inquired about whether they had heard the term
"strong Black woman" and what it meant to them, how they were viewed
by others and how they reacted to those perceptions, and how they defined
depression and whether it was an experience that Black women had.
Because I took an open-ended approach to interviewing, most questions
were follow-ups to the traits, metaphors, and experiences the interviewees
associated with being a Black woman.
While not generalizable to the population of Black women at large, the
data gathered resonate with many of the themes regarding strength noted
in the clinical literature, suggesting that the discourse of strength is in fact
a prominent aspect of Black women's individual experiences of gender.
Moreover, in the course of the interviews, women made reference to the
existence of a strength mandate within the lives of women kin and friends,
further pointing toward strength as an expectation found throughout social
classes and age groups of Black women.
In collecting and analyzing the data, I was interested in several ques
tions: whether being strong was shorthand for gender socialization, how
strength might encourage the embrace and reproduction of particular atti
tudes and behaviors among Black women, and the extent to which indi
vidual women evidenced distress as they sought to adhere to the mandate
of being strong. Thus, I employed both grounded theory and voice
centered tools of data analysis. Drawing on grounded theory methods
(Glaser and Strauss 1967), I engaged in multiple readings of the transcrip
tions to ascertain whether commonalities existed in how the women
described their experiences of gender. Moving from the generative open
coding to the more focused axial and selective codings, I found that the
concepts of strength and being a strong Black woman were evident across
the sample. Furthermore, two core categories of strength emerged: hard
ship as a cornerstone of Black womanhood and the intensification of fem
inine demands to be selfless caretakers of others.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
36 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
Once the data suggested that the discourse of strength was a recognizable
sociocultural expectation among the interviewees, I sought to ascertain
how the women positioned themselves in the narratives of strength they
told. That is, to what extent did the discourse of strength suffice as an
explanatory mechanism for the women's individual experiences of gen
der? To this end, I drew on the Listening Guide, a feminist, voice-centered
analytical tool (Brown and Gilligan 1991; Gilligan et al. 2003). Through
a set of guided readings, the Listening Guide focuses attention on both
the content (metaphors, recurring images, narratives) and the format of
speech (disavowals, changes in volume, and contradictions) to identify
how individual speakers mark their proximity to and distance from cul
tural discourses. This aspect of the analysis led to the finding that many of
the Black women interviewed struggled to embody strength in their inter
actions with others in their homes, in their communities, and in the pub
lic sphere. As a result, their words, shifts in topic and pronouns, and
hesitations revealed a gap between social expectations and their desires.
Attending to this gap helped me to see that "internalization" was a process
several named for their attempts to hide strength-discrepant realities and
feelings to maintain their standing as good and strong Black women.
According to the women, internalization took form in behaviors, includ
ing overindulging in eating, shopping, and drinking, as well as in physical
and mental distress, namely, hypertension, heart disease, stomach ills,
respiratory difficulties, and depressive episodes, often referred to as ner
vous breakdowns. Such a two-tiered method of analysis was especially
helpful in pointing toward the disparities that exist between social dis
courses and individual needs, disparities that were often difficult for the
women to explicitly acknowledge.
FINDINGS
Within the interviews, the women used the term "strength" in various
ways?to describe their personal capacities to focus on goals, assert their
independence, and demonstrate moral character. However, in addition to
these individual definitions was a consistent use of the term for two
thirds of the sample (31 out of 44 interviewees): to represent a pervasive
social and cultural prescription that affected both working- and middle
class Black women. Yet while not conclusive, two other qualities appeared
to distinguish the group of women who struggled with the discourse from
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 37
the minority who did not: First, they tended to view themselves or were
viewed by others as important caretakers, whether of their own children,
aging parents, financially vulnerable kin, or coworkers; second, and
related to the first point, they were largely in the childbearing and child
rearing years of mid-20s to mid-40s. To provide some context to quoted
material, I identify the women by social class, age, and caretaking
responsibilities.2
And I think that strong woman idea has been planted in my head, too. That
you're supposed to be able to, you know, just muster through this, and, you
know, make it without scarring or whatever. (29, divorced mother)
A strong Black woman is someone who endures a lot. ... A strong Black
woman would be like, "Oh, well, you know, that's what's given to me, and
I'm going to endure. And that's what makes me strong." (21, single, no
children)
To be a strong woman means that she can kind of handle things. Like you
can take care of probably anything, because in life you're going to have a
lot of situations, and a lot of blows, and a lot of changes and stuff, so you
just kind of have to be strong enough to get through it. (32, married mother)
Strength was a cultural mandate that provided Black women with clear
guidelines for their behavior and operated as a "tyranny of . . . shoulds"
(Horney 1950) in their lives and interactions with others. Like other gen
der discourses, strength talk incorporated moral language, as it defined
good, acceptable, and desirable Black women by a selflessness and defer
ence to others (e.g., children, partners, extended family, coworkers).
These interviewees experienced being strong as an imperative to
exhibit an automatic endurance to a life perceived as filled with obstacles,
unfairness, and tellingly, a lack of assistance from others. Drawing on the
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
38 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 39
managing a difficult life with dignity, grace, and composure. This "cool"
(Majors and Billson 1992) fa?ade includes an element of restraint and takes
the form of rarely, if ever, showing any discrepant emotions, even to inti
mates. Rather than the active bravado and confrontation seen among some
Black men who present an attitude of toughness, the cool of these strong
women entailed a stoicism, a quiet acceptance of what they could not
change. A repeated refrain in the data was that the women rarely saw the
strong Black women in their families cry or fall apart. As one said of her
mother, "You know she maintains a certain kind of decorum, and a certain
kind of outward togetherness. Even if inside, she's conflicted or she's hav
ing a nervous breakdown or she's depressed or anxious or whatever . . .
nobody else knows (MC, 35, single, no children). Being strong induced a
lack of self-care because strong women were trying to be "this heroine, this
woman that can take care of everything" (MC, 30, single, no children); con
tinuously "help[ing] people work through their problems as opposed to tak
ing time out and working on ourselves" (MC, 25, single, no children); and
unable to say, "I need help. I need assistance. Or, I need support" (WC, 31,
single, no children).
From their girlhoods, these women recalled being expected by the
strong women in their lives to present themselves with a cool fa?ade.
Dwelling on pains and fears was seen as weakening a woman and making
her less than capable of surviving the battle that her life was supposed to
be. In particular, these women were raised to present an encouraging face
to others in their care.
We were taught that you really didn't show your feelings that much. You
kind of kept things inside and dealt with them. . . . [The] main thing was
taught that, whatever it is, overcome it, deal with it, and go ahead on. . . .
Once you're a mother and you have children, you have to show strength.
Because if you show weakness, then they will like, oh, give up and won't
even try to succeed. And so, we were just taught to automatically, you just
pick up the strength. You get into yourself and, you know, if you have to go
into your room and just, pray and talk or whatever, you deal with it. (43,
divorced mother)
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
40 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
So, I'm supposed to figure it out, and really that's what I've been doing. I've
been forcing myself to figure out how I'm doing what I'm doing. Because
people expect me to be this person, you know, I'm not. If I was to, say, for
instance, lose my apartment. Or if I was to lose my car. Or my lights went
out. My people would freak out. Because that's not supposed to [happen].
I'm too strong for that. And, you know, I have this, all this power to make
things different. And I'm not supposed to suffer like other people. (29,
divorced mother)
As a result, this woman felt and was often described as being "emotion
less" because she did not express disappointment or fear in public and
would self-protectively "just break down in the corner in the closet by
myself." It was not atypical for the women to speak about the discrepancy
between their perceptions and others' expectations: "I don't think I'm as
strong as people see me" (36, widowed mother).
Given that mustering through adversity was so critical to earning of the
badge of a "real" Black woman, many interviewees were hampered in
their abilities to openly discuss injustice in their lives and take action to
challenge those conditions that were unfair but deemed as inevitable. Not
validated by the discourse of strength, such strains were consequently
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 41
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
42 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
(MC, 32, single mother). The discourse of strength asserts that when struggle
is so omnipresent and needs so profound, how can a woman?in good
faith?focus on herself? Self-knowledge, joy, and creativity are not part of
the experience of being strong, as such activities are often seen as selfish
and "superfluous" (MC, 32, single mother) for taking time and energy away
from a Black woman's being of use to others. As a 36-year-old single
woman and confidant of her ailing mother poignantly stated, "[To be a
strong Black woman] you have to die to yourself. And let everybody else
live. And help them live. That's what our community tells us."
Equating strength so closely with ever-present struggles and the needs
of others tells a woman that there are always larger, more meaningful con
cerns than what she is feeling inside. It convinces her to defer her dreams,
out of the fear that pursuing them will make her appear weak and selfish to
those around her. With tears and a quivering voice, the single woman
quoted above described her own mother's extreme identification with the
role of nurturer, to the point of selflessness: "I think the way my mom lived
her life, and it's probably the time she grew up, her life belongs to her fam
ily. And it's not really her own, in a sense. . . . She is completely self
sacrificing. To a point where, to a certain extent, that's a part of her that I
don't want to be. Because, even when she's sick, I mean, deathly ill, she's
still giving. She doesn't know when to stop." Other interviewees demon
strated a similar discomfort with the mandate of strength as they discussed
the consequences of being strong on the lives of women in their families
and friendship circles. However, more common than outright critiques of
strength were discussions of the strategies the interviewees and other Black
women used to keep up the fa?ade of being capable and unflappable.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 43
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
44 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 45
[But in the process] I felt so smothered. And I didn't feel like, it wasn't as
if I didn't want to take care of my parents, because I did. But, I, I also
wanted help. And I expected that people would help me, and I didn't get it."
Although this interviewee was unique in openly discussing her clinical
depression, her talk of its genesis and existence in her life overlapped with
the extremes of strength behavior noted by other interviewees. Such women
spoke of the risks of being too strong?a woman who "forgets her self. You
know, and she puts so much of her into her environment and her family and
her entourage, that's when it would become a weakness, because then the
person has forgotten who she is. Where her needs are" (WC, 39, single, no
children). Selflessness was the logical end to a complete identification with
being strong?"you just block everybody out. You can block your needs
out" (WC, 57, divorced mother). Thus, the woman who attempts to be a
"24-hour woman" (WC, 24, single mother) and "do everything and any
thing .. . [will] die at the age of 40" (WC, 31, single, no children). For these
women, then, depression can be understood as the result of such denial and
the attendant discrediting of those thoughts, concerns, needs, and aspects of
self outside of the strength mandate.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
46 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 47
in Barbee 1994). This suggests that as with other women, Black women
experience caretaking expectations that can submerge their abilities to
voice a range of emotions and nurture themselves. However, unlike white
middle-class women and perhaps like working-class women (Scattolon
2003), Black women have fewer structural resources for avoiding or chal
lenging a life overdetermined by such inequality.
Other researchers have posited supportive female networks as critical
to Black women's well-being and survival amid adversity (Hill Collins
2000; Stack 1974). However, the interviewees spoke rarely of their dis
tress in their closest women networks and then only tangentially
addressed their frustrations. Interestingly, those who had had open con
versations with their mothers noted these as being recent occurrences that
typically followed a serious breakdown in the elder's emotional or physi
cal well-being. The relative silence of interviewees on the subject of sup
port from other women suggests that such networks may help women to
manage their struggles rather than question their loads. Because a major
ity of Blacks associate depression with moral weakness, Black women
may experience shame when divulging their depressive realities to kin and
friends (Clark Amankwaa 2003a; Danquah 1998; Schreiber, Noerager
Stern, and Wilson 2000). Subsequent research might examine the opera
tion of Black women's networks specifically around the cultural mandate
of strength and the reality of depression.
One might expect that women who are racial minorities, working class,
and/or single mothers would experience more depression. Among the
interviewees, only one mentioned a diagnosis of clinical depression. The
low number could be an artifact of the nonclinical nature of the sample or
a phenomenon tied to the underreporting of mental distress among African
Americans due to perceptions of depression as a sign of moral weakness.
In addition, the discourse of strength could co-exist with other under
standings of self that offer some protection against depression. The fact
that a majority of the women voiced some criticism of the strength dis
course but still identified proudly as strong Black women suggests that
they may have other culturally based resources for managing their lives.
However, for the majority of the women interviewed, being strong is a
significant and compelling sociocultural contribution to distress. By nor
malizing struggle and heavy caretaking while censuring women against
acknowledging strength-discrepant experiences and needs, being strong
denies real inequities in a woman's life. And as suggested in this article,
the eventual cost of being a strong Black woman may be depression, char
acterized as a silencing of a range of her human needs.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
48 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
NOTES
1. Throughout the quoted material, text emphasized in the original is set in italics.
2. Social class designations were self-reported and were not gathered in earlier
pilot interviews. Thus, in some cases, only age and caretaking responsibilities are
noted. In excerpts, working class is designated by "WC" and middle class by "MC."
REFERENCES
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 49
-. 1999a. Silencing the self: Inner dialogues and outer realities. In The
interactional nature of depression, edited by Thomas Joiner and James C.
Coyne, 221-46. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
-. 1999b. Ways of listening to depressed women in qualitative research.
Canadian Psychology 40:91 -101.
-. 2003. The anger of hope and the anger of despair: How anger relates to
women's depression. In Situating sadness: Women and depression in social
context, edited by Janet M. Stoppard and Linda M. McMullen, 62-87. New
York: New York University.
Danquah, M. N. 1998. Willow weep for me: A Black woman's journey through
depression. New York: One World.
Edge, Dawn, and Anne Rogers. 2005. Dealing with it: Black Caribbean women's
response to adversity and psychological distress associated with pregnancy,
childbirth, and early motherhood. Social Science & Medicine 61:15-25.
Falicov, Celia Jaes. 2003. Culture, society and gender in depression. Journal of
Family Therapy 25:371-87.
Gillespie, Marcia Ann. 1984. The myth of the strong Black woman. In Feminist
frameworks: Alternative theoretical accounts of the relations between women
and men, edited by Alison M. Jaggar and Paula S. Rothenberg, 32-35. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Gilligan, Carol, Renee Spencer, M. Katherine Weinberg, and Tatiana Bertsch. 2003.
On the Listening Guide: A voice-centered relational model. In Qualitative
research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design,
edited by Paul Camic, Jean Rhodes, and Lucy Yardley, 157-72. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Glaser, Barney, and Anselm Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory:
Strategies for qualitative research. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Greene, Beverly. 1996. African-American women: Considering diverse identities
and societal barriers in psychotherapy. In Women and mental health: Annals of
the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 789, edited by Jeri Sechzer, Sheila
Pfalfflin, Florence Denmark, Anne Griffin, and Susan Blumenthal, 191-209.
New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Hill Collins, Patricia. 2000. Black feminist thought. New York: Routledge.
hooks, bell. \9%\.Ain'tIa woman: Black women and feminism. Boston: South End.
Horney, Karen. 1950. Neurosis and human growth: The struggle toward self
realization. New York: Norton.
Irvin Painter, Nell. 1997. Sojourner Truth: A life, a symbol. New York: Norton.
Jones, Charisse, and Kumea Shorter-Gooden. 2003. Shifting: The double lives of
Black women in America. New York: Harper Collins.
Majors, Richard, and Janet Mancini Billson. 1992. Cool pose: The dilemmas of
Black manhood in America. New York: Touchstone.
Martin, Emily. 1987. The woman in the body. Boston: Beacon.
Martin, Marilyn. 2002. Saving our last nerve: The Black woman's path to mental
health. Roscoe, IL: Hilton.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
50 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
Mitchell, Angela, and Kennise Herring. 1998. What the blues is all about: Black
women overcoming stress and depression. New York: Perigee.
Morgan, Joan. 1999. When chickenheads come home to roost: My life as a hip
hop feminist. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Nazroo, James, Angela Edwards, and George Brown. 1998. Gender differences in
the prevalence of depression: Artifact, alternative disorders, biology or roles?
Sociology of Health and Illness 20:312-30.
Neale Hurston, Zora. 1937. Their eyes were watching God. Greenwich, CT:
Fawcett.
Robinson Brown, Diane. 1990. Depression among Blacks. In Handbook of men
tal health and mental disorder among Black Americans, edited by Dorothy S.
Ruiz, 71-93. New York: Greenwood.
Scattolon, Yvette. 2003. "I just went on... . There was no feeling better, there was
no feeling worse": Rural women's experiences of living with and managing
"depression." In Situating sadness: Women and depression in social context,
edited by Janet M. Stoppard and Linda M. McMullen, 162-82. New York: New
York University.
Schreiber, Rita. 1996. (Re)defining my self: Women's process of recovery from
depression. Qualitative Health Research 6:469-91.
-. 1998. Clueing in: A guide to solving the puzzle of self for women recov
ering from depression. Health Care for Women International 19:269-88.
-. 2001. Wandering in the dark: Women's experiences with depression.
Health Care for Women International 22:85-98.
Schreiber, Rita, and Gwen Hartrick. 2002. Keeping it together: How women use
the biometical explanatory model to manage the stigma of depression. Issues
in Mental Health Nursing 23:91-105.
Schreiber, Rita, Phyllis Noerager Stern, and Charmaine Wilson. 1998. The con
texts for managing depression and its stigma among Black West Indian
Canadian women. Journal of Advanced Nursing 27:510-17.
-. 2000. Being strong: How Black West-Indian Canadian women manage
depression and its stigma. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 32:39-45.
Scott, Kesho Yvonne. 1991. The habit of surviving. New York: Ballantine.
Stack, Carol. 1974. All our kin: Strategies for survival in a Black community.
New York: Harper.
Stoppard, Janet. 2000. Understanding depression: Feminist social construction
ist approaches. New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Susan L. 1995. Lessons in living. Essence 26 (8): 57-8, 104, 106.
-. 1998a. Taking back our power. Essence 29 (1): 107.
-. 1998b. The measure of success. Essence 29 (11): 71.
-. 2002. Passion for peace. Essence 33 (8): 9.
Townsend Gilkes, Cheryl. 2001. (Tf it wasn't for the women . . .": Black women's
experience and womanist culture in church and community. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Wallace, Mich?le. [1978] 1990. Black macho and the myth of the superwoman.
New York: Verso.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 51
Walters, Vivienne, Joyce Yaa Avotri, and Nickie Charles. 2003. "Your heart is
never free": Women in Wales and Ghana talking about distress. In Situating
sadness: Women and depression in social context, edited by Janet M. Stoppard
and Linda M. McMullen, 183-206. New York: New York University.
This content downloaded from 109.93.10.18 on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:46:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms