The Black Superwoman & Mental Health

The book you are holding is a whisper, a cry, a scream. The Black Superwoman & Mental Health: Power & Pain is a brilliantly imagined, conceived, and produced manifesto. A flag planted firmly in the soil of Black women’s lives. Soil that is bold, and fearless. Soil that is rich and fertile. Soil that allows Black women to blossom and bloom. This revolution, this ongoing discussion, this language we are creating to reveal how we have hurt and how we heal has made us flowers straining toward the sun in our mother’s gardens.

The Black Superwoman & Mental Health: Power & Pain is an addition to the growing canon of memoirs, nonfiction, scholarly work, research, journalism, and essays, dismantling and challenging The Strong Black Woman/Black Superwoman complex and ideology. This book will become a seminal text, a crucial reference, and an inspiration as Black women codify a conversation that must be cross-generational, generational, and ongoing.

I’ve known Venise Berry from “way back” and respected and admired her as a sister, a sister writer/scholar, and an intellectual adventurer. So, when she asked me to write this preface, she knew the answer in advance. This is an anthology of narratives, meditations, fiction, research, confessions, and poetry by some of the best minds anywhere. Quiet as it is kept, Black women have a habit of overachieving, from Black women raising families in poverty who looked back on childhoods filled with so much love those children never knew they were “poor,” to freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, astronaut Mae Jemison, trailblazer Shirley Chisolm, visionary Ava DuVernay and Michelle Obama who offered a Master Class on how to be a First Lady. And so many more of us.

Because of the popular stereotype of the Black superwoman, when it comes to mental health Black women often experience a life that is “less than.” Emotional ups and downs happen to everyone, but research has shown that Black women tend to find themselves more stressed and depressed than others. The Black Superwoman & Mental Health: Power & Pain examines various issues concerning the mental health of Black women. The idea for this book comes from the experiences of both editors as we have and still battle with the mental health issues of our daughters, along with our own daily challenges. This anthology highlights short stories, essays, and poetry, along with accessible research. Many of these Black women find themselves struggling, especially when they try to play the role of superwoman. This book is a unique look at this topic with a wide literary reach and direct focus on current mental health issues.

Neal-Barnett (2018) reported that there are a number of situations that impact the mental health of Black women including stereotypes like the “angry Black woman” or “Jezebel,” being the only one or the first, experiencing microaggressions and dealing with race biased trauma. Mental health has become an important area of concern for everyone, but it is especially difficult for Black women who are trying to play superwoman. According to the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance (July 2023), single Black mothers are six times more likely to experience depressive symptoms as they deal with emotions and stress because of the Black Superwoman Schema. In her webinar on Black women and mental health, Dr. Michelle Albert explains in Essence Magazine that chronic stress affects heart health. “In our research we have found that Black women report higher levels of stress compared to White, Asian, and Hispanic women” (Hopkins, 2021).

Other examples include journal articles on the topic such as, “Addressing Mental Health Disparities in Black Women” (Hughes-Barrow & Johnson, 2023), “Depression May look Different for Black women” by Jacquelyn Taylor (New York University, 2022), “The Strong Black Woman vs Mental Health” by J. Camille Hall et al. (Health and Social Work, 2021), “Do I Really Need to go See Somebody? Black women’s Perceptions for Help Seeking for Depression” by Tamara Nelson and others (Journal of Black Psychology, 2020), and “Pathways to Equitable and Antiracist Maternal Mental Health Care: Insights from Black women Stakeholders” by Kay Matthews et al. (Health Affairs, 2021). Plus, there are magazines, blogs, and websites that focus on mental health issues surrounding Black women and girls (Essence Magazine, Main Line Health, National Black Woman’s Justice Institute, Health Evolution, and Prevention). Finally, in 2021, a documentary called the Myth of the Black Superwoman: An exploration of Mental Health, African American Women, and Blackwomanlology was produced by Veronique Lashell MacRae (2021). Plus, MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Tiffany Cross hosted a panel discussion with several prominent Black women in 2022 called “The Culture is: Black women discussing issues surrounding Black women’s mental health”.

In his book Stereotypes, Cognition and Culture, Perry Hinton (2000) explains the three components of a stereotype.

1-A group of people are identified by specific characteristics.

2-Those characteristics are attributed to the group as a whole.

3-Anyone with those characteristics is then lumped into that stereotypical category.

He suggests that a stereotype in order to be effective must also be known, the specific trait recognized within it, and applicable to the represented social group.