Mammies, Matriarchs, And Other Controlling Images Summary

Black Identity within American Literature and Mass Media
Summary
Helena gives a great summary in depth of Patricia Hill Collins’s “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images” and Toni Morrison’s “Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination” texts. Helena argues that the white dominant culture misinterprets the identity of Black people and defines them through negative stereotypical images. Collins states “Intersecting oppressions race, class, gender and sexuality could not continue without powerful ideological justifications for their existence, which is perpetuated through controlling images” (Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images, 76). Helena declares that Toni Morrison writes about the significance of African Americans in the American literary imagination and how white scholars focus only on the negative representations of Black people in the American literature. Helena’s précis focus on how African Americans are appeared incorrectly in American literature and media through examining Collins and Morrison’s texts. Media and American literature have a great impact in the public which they are in
“Black people have been forced into mental and physical enslavement as a result of the controlling images presented in mass media and American literature by white male dominance” (Helena, 5). Black’s oppression and other stereotypical images still exist today. The reason behind representing Black women negatively is the way Black women are treated harshly by Black men. This kind of treatment assures that whites' assumptions about Black women's oppression are true. Helena agrees with Morrison’s statement that Black writers should present their writing within the American literary canon. “The current ‘classics’ of American literature needs to be reviewed and include more works by Black writers” (Helena,