Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength

Black women are strong. At least thats what everyone says and how they are constantly depicted. But what exactly does this strength entail? And what price do Black women pay for it? In this book the author a psychologist and pastoral theologian examines the burdensome yoke that the ideology of the Strong Black Woman places upon African American women. She demonstrates how the three core features of the ideology--emotional strength caregiving and independence--constrain the lives of African American women and predispose them to physical and emotional health problems including obesity diabetes hypertension and anxiety. She traces the historical social and theological influences that resulted in the evolution and maintenance of the Strong Black Woman including the Christian church R & B and hip-hop artists and popular television and film. Drawing upon womanist pastoral theology and twelve-step philosophy she calls upon pastoral caregivers to aid in the healing of African American womens identities and crafts a twelve-step program for Strong Black Women in recovery. Too Heavy a Yoke is a much-needed thoughtful and nuanced examination of the Strong Black Woman stereotype--a significant new contribution to multiple disciplines of pastoral care and counseling psychology sociology African American and womanist-feminist studies and constructive theology. Walker Barnes draws on both womanist and Trinitarian theologies to examine how the church can play a part in healing and liberating black women from the burden of strength. Meticulously researched and beautifully written this book belongs on the shelf of every minister and pastoral counselor and indeed every woman who knows in her soul the burdens of being a StrongBlackWoman. --Pamela Cooper-White Ben G. and Nancye Clapp Gautier Professor of Pastoral Theology Care and Counseling Columbia Theological Seminary Well done! This book is a much-needed gift to the field of pastoral theology. It is a well nuanced and explicated research volume and a practical guide for caregivers pastors those who love women struggling with the ideology of the StrongBlackWoman as well as those in recovery. --Marsha Foster Boyd President Emerita Ecumenical Theological Seminary A prayerful prophetic poetic pastoral powerful womanist analysis of the StrongBlackWoman from an interdisciplinary experiential perspective names the context content complexities and pathology of many Black womens embodied archetypal systemic oppression and posits hopeful options for a paradigmatic shift of recovery. Woven with artistry and passion Too Heavy a Yoke is a must-read for clergy therapists caregivers and any persons or groups committed to the liberation of black women ultimately the liberation of all society. --Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan Professor of Religion Shaw University Divinity School Chanequa Walker-Barnes is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at McAfee School of Theology Mercer University Atlanta Georgia. She is a licensed psychologist and a candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church. Her articles have been published in a wide range of scholarly journals including Journal of Pastoral Theology Child Development and American Journal of Community Psychology.