ENG 102: English Composition II - Gray

ENG 102: Composition II

Professor Rhonda Gray

This guide features a collection of books, scholarly journals, and popular media for you to use as you research your final paper topics.

Love and Justice: The Patriarchal Duel Between Black Marriages and Mass Incarceration

As children, we are often ushered into a household that has unspoken rules about authority, gender, and sexuality undergirded by perceptions around race. For example, the head of household (mother or father) has economic power and social status allowing them to dictate what happens in the household. You are raised to fulfill the expectations of your prescribed gender (boy or girl) with boys traditionally reared to be dominant and girls to be submissive, especially towards other boys. The “natural” expression of sexuality is heteronormative and any other forms of sexual display are considered deviant. One’s racial identity also establishes a hierarchy that dates back to slavery in America where the white body is deemed inherently superior to the black body. How do these social codes impact our individual lives, institutions, and larger political forces?

Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage, a novel, explores the physical, psychological and emotional wounding caused by patriarchal norms displayed through the romantic relationship of a southern Black couple, Roy and Celestial, that caves as a result of Roy’s wrongful imprisonment. The novel reveals the struggle Celestial experiences as she tries to live up to the patriarchal expectations of a dutiful wife during her husband’s incarceration as well as Roy’s attempt to hold on to his patriarchal position as husband and breadwinner despite being imprisoned. The breakdown of their marriage and Roy’s subsequent struggle to rebuild himself speak to the prison’s lurking presence in the lives of not only those who have been incarcerated but also their families, communities and, more broadly, the global society. bell hooks’ “Understanding Patriarchy,” chapter two of The Will to Change: Men Masculinity and Love (2004) offers a Black Feminist critique of patriarchal norms that will allow us to see how the characters’ lives are negatively harmed through the adoption of these norms on a personal, communal and institutional level.

Professor Rhonda Gray

Rhonda Gray is a Professor of English at Roxbury Community College in Boston, Massachusetts. She teaches courses on rhetoric and composition, literature and cultural studies reflecting research interests in Black feminism, Womanism, American history and culture, and contemplative pedagogy to support a trauma-informed classroom. Within her role as the Honors Program Coordinator (2009-2016), she facilitated the college’s inaugural accreditation of its Honors Program. In 2016, she participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Institute titled “The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath” where she examined the use of minstrel representations of African Americans in US print journalism. She is the co-author of “Using BEAM to Integrate Information Literacy and Writing: A Framework with Case Studies” (Purdue University Press, 2019). Also, Rhonda was one of a dozen facilitators of a national Book Club supporting the launch of Octavia Raheem’s Pause, Rest, Be: Stillness Practices for Courage in Times of Change (Shambhala Publications, 2022) that blends her work as an English Professor and as a certified yoga instructor. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of Black feminist theories on anger, Womanist activism, and embodied healing of generational trauma. Rhonda is a member of the National Women’s Studies Association and the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition.