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Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience
This book has won the 2014 Qualitative Book Award
Black Women and Narratives of Resilience is a multi-generational story of growing up black and female in the rural South. This book captures the artistry, strength, hope, sound, language, and creativity shared by first-hand accounts of black women in a familial village community in North Carolina. Sweetwater is about the black female experience as it relates to friendship, family, spirituality, poverty, education, addiction, mental illness, romantic relationships, raising children, and everyday survival. Written from field notes and memory, the author combines narrative and autoethnography to weave her own experiences as a rural black girl into the story, revealing the complexities of black women’s lived experiences and exposing the communicative and interpersonal choices black women make through storytelling. Narrative inquiry and black feminism are offered as creative educational tools for discussing how and why black women’s singular interior lives are culturally and globally significant.
Black Women and Narratives of Resilience is a multi-generational story of growing up black and female in the rural South. This book captures the artistry, strength, hope, sound, language, and creativity shared by first-hand accounts of black women in a familial village community in North Carolina. Sweetwater is about the black female experience as it relates to friendship, family, spirituality, poverty, education, addiction, mental illness, romantic relationships, raising children, and everyday survival. Written from field notes and memory, the author combines narrative and autoethnography to weave her own experiences as a rural black girl into the story, revealing the complexities of black women’s lived experiences and exposing the communicative and interpersonal choices black women make through storytelling. Narrative inquiry and black feminism are offered as creative educational tools for discussing how and why black women’s singular interior lives are culturally and globally significant.
129 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 26, 2021
I didn't just read Sweetwater, I felt Sweetwater. I felt the emotions of Black women struggling to make sense of life and carve out happiness in unrelenting circumstances. I laughed and shook my head at familiar elements of Black culture experienced in my own home. Robin going back to Sweetwater reminded me of the journey I've undertaken to understand my roots and the influence of Black culture on how I view and navigate the world. It's powerful in its simplicity, honesty, and vulnerability.
September 7, 2023
Dr. Robin M. Boylorn, after having received her PhD, decides to put her formal education to the test by returning to her rural hometown of Sweetwater, NC (a fictionalized name for her authentic hometown) and interviewing nine women. Her subjects are family members and neighbors. She aims to use memory and storytelling as a way to better understand these women and recall their remarkable lives. In doing so, in a mere 100 pages or so, Boylorn allows readers to engage in an inquiry about what it means to be a poor Black woman in rural America. Boylorn weaves a tapestry of intersecting lives in this close-knit community in which women must grapple with poverty, motherhood, and domestic violence.
The vignettes of the women are told with honesty and vividly paint pictures of each of their lives. It’s easy to read this book in a single day because the narratives are so gripping—at times tragic and at times uplifting. Boylorn incorporates poetry throughout the prose offering a new way to understand the stories. These poetic retellings sprinkled throughout the book are so gripping and beautiful.
Lastly, what makes Boylorn such an authentic and trustworthy ethnographer is that she realizes the dangers and consequences of stepping into a community, albeit her own, and studying it from a sociological perspective: “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act…setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space.” (Joan Didion)
Boylorn confesses that “telling [these women’s stories] was murder and I anxiously became a co-conspirator, killing the silence with the story.”
By recognizing Didion’s warning, Boylorn is able to respectfully tell the stories of Sweetwater residents with utmost respect, making the murder a “justifiable violence.”
The vignettes of the women are told with honesty and vividly paint pictures of each of their lives. It’s easy to read this book in a single day because the narratives are so gripping—at times tragic and at times uplifting. Boylorn incorporates poetry throughout the prose offering a new way to understand the stories. These poetic retellings sprinkled throughout the book are so gripping and beautiful.
Lastly, what makes Boylorn such an authentic and trustworthy ethnographer is that she realizes the dangers and consequences of stepping into a community, albeit her own, and studying it from a sociological perspective: “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act…setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space.” (Joan Didion)
Boylorn confesses that “telling [these women’s stories] was murder and I anxiously became a co-conspirator, killing the silence with the story.”
By recognizing Didion’s warning, Boylorn is able to respectfully tell the stories of Sweetwater residents with utmost respect, making the murder a “justifiable violence.”
March 22, 2024
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
One of the things I hope happens is that this text becomes a staple of undergraduate and graduate courses in universities. It is so important to have black voices telling their stories always, and I think especially in academia. I have read countless of articles and texts during my time in graduate school, but this has been one of the most eye-opening ones. Boylorn uses the narrative storytelling of her culture to rely the inequalities that black women face within in their own communities and how that is multiplied in the world at large.
Divided into three separate parts, Boylorn introduces her study and gives background on her field. The seond part - the meat of the book - is told in narrative style with stories that interlink and move in a chronological order about Boylorn's own family and the people of Sweetwater. The third part returns to analytical format with methodology and results as well as acknowledgements of contributors. No real names are used, except for the roles of Boylorn's own family. This book was impactful to me as a Brown women who understands in a visceral way what Boylorn is saying, but who still cannot remotely say that she has experienced what Black women experience every day of their life.
Highly recommend.
One of the things I hope happens is that this text becomes a staple of undergraduate and graduate courses in universities. It is so important to have black voices telling their stories always, and I think especially in academia. I have read countless of articles and texts during my time in graduate school, but this has been one of the most eye-opening ones. Boylorn uses the narrative storytelling of her culture to rely the inequalities that black women face within in their own communities and how that is multiplied in the world at large.
Divided into three separate parts, Boylorn introduces her study and gives background on her field. The seond part - the meat of the book - is told in narrative style with stories that interlink and move in a chronological order about Boylorn's own family and the people of Sweetwater. The third part returns to analytical format with methodology and results as well as acknowledgements of contributors. No real names are used, except for the roles of Boylorn's own family. This book was impactful to me as a Brown women who understands in a visceral way what Boylorn is saying, but who still cannot remotely say that she has experienced what Black women experience every day of their life.
Highly recommend.
October 5, 2013
touching account of women's resilience.
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October 24, 2014305.48896 B7927 2013
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews