Intersectionality of Slavery and Gender

Analyzing the Experiences of Black Women in Selected Writings

Abstract

Intersectionality has created a new caste system which strictly adheres to the problem of colour, segregation, injustice, violence, and categorization on the basis of social class, race, and gender. The interconnected nature of social categorization combines multiple identities including racial identity, sexuality, disability, nationality, and gender; intersects each other, and results into discrimination and oppression. All forms of racial and gender inequalities reinforce each other, fortify identity politics, and ostracize on the basis of gender, caste and colour of skin. Slavery as an institution has also colossally impacted the question of gender inequality in American society. In the epoch of slavery, the women of different colour were the major victims of two-fold exploitation as being a woman and being a black racially. They were prime targets of sexual exploitation, physical violence, and free labor. In African American Literature, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are the two most prominent writings which depict the adverse effects of slavery, which has ruined several generations of the Blacks. The experiences of black women as enslaved workers, and victims of sexual exploitation are not less than a nightmare. The selected writings explicitly expose the ugly face of slavery that kept the black people particularly women in iron-made baskets for centuries. The study focuses on the discourse of two selected texts that how were black women maltreated, marginalized, sexually exploited and dehumanized.