Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a unique perspective on the complexities of being a Black mother addicted to crack, powder cocaine, heroin, and crank. Qualitative interviews provide rich narratives from five Black mothers challenging negative controlled images and stereotypes of Black motherhood and drug addiction. Using Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Feminism, and Resilience as conceptual frameworks, this book confronts hegemonic constructions of Black mothers and their children within the context of drug addictions. Particular attention is focused on using the mothers' self-definitions of struggles and family resilience to dismantle the negative controlled images of the junkie and the crack ho' and her crack baby.
The mothers in this book speak truth to their experiences with motherhood and addictions to some of the most powerful street drugs that explicitly defy the junkie, crack ho', and crack baby images. The book also addresses tensions existing within researcher-participant relationships and nuances unique to research with Black mothers in recovery. Personal lessons learned and challenges experienced during the research process are highlighted as Tivis shares dilemmas of self-reflections of positionality, accountability and use of language.
Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions contains important implications for research and practice in education and across other disciplines concentrating on mothers and children from racially diverse backgrounds. This book will be relevant for both undergraduate and graduate students and academics within these disciplines. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions will be of interest to advanced pre-service teachers and other disciplines engaging in clinical and professional practice with addiction and with families.
The mothers in this book speak truth to their experiences with motherhood and addictions to some of the most powerful street drugs that explicitly defy the junkie, crack ho', and crack baby images. The book also addresses tensions existing within researcher-participant relationships and nuances unique to research with Black mothers in recovery. Personal lessons learned and challenges experienced during the research process are highlighted as Tivis shares dilemmas of self-reflections of positionality, accountability and use of language.
Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions contains important implications for research and practice in education and across other disciplines concentrating on mothers and children from racially diverse backgrounds. This book will be relevant for both undergraduate and graduate students and academics within these disciplines. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions will be of interest to advanced pre-service teachers and other disciplines engaging in clinical and professional practice with addiction and with families.
"Tierra B. Tivis' Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a fresh perspective on the experiences of families struggling to overcome structural barriers to health and wellbeing. Her emic perspective provides a sympathetic hearing from African American mothers from a strengths-based perspective. Not only do we hear from mothers themselves, but Dr. Tivis provides tools for understanding illicit drug use and addiction from an intersectional perspective that considers both race and gender. Building on the work of black feminism and critical race theory, Tivis argues from a humanistic perspective that realities of the lives of triply oppressed poor women of color should lead to provision of better treatment options, and that criminalization is short-sighted. Dr. Tivis provides an update to Patricia Hill Collins' controlling images of black womanhood by examining the "crack ho'" stereotype that dehumanizes the women who are caught-up in this life circumstance, but she does not stop there. In Tivis' structural analysis, she examines the impact of the drug wars on the chocolate inner cities of Detroit and Atlantic City, and points to the limited educational and employment options, as well as limited access to appropriate health and drug treatment, that are available. We celebrate this important contribution to the literature concerning black women's resilience and agency, and we recommend this book to students in the social sciences as well as policy makers seeking a deeper understanding of these issues." -Assata Zerai, Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign