Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions

Tierra B. Tivis holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and scholarship focuses on early childhood, early childhood special education, and Black families and resilience from a Black Feminist and Critical Race perspective.

• Acknowledgments – Laurence J. Parker: Introduction – “These People Are Suffering”: Help versus Incarceration – Tools for Understanding Drug Addiction and Black Mothers’ Standpoint – Origin of the Crack Ho’: Mammies, Jezebels, Controlled Images, and Prosecution of Addiction – “From Suga to Shit”: The Drug Business and Destruction of Black Communities – More About the Mothers, Research Practice, Black Motherhood and Addiction – “I Had Help”: Kinship, Drug Addictions, and Black Family Resilience – “Wasn’ No Junkie, I Was a Workin’ Addict ... It’s a Difference”: Self-Definition of Black Mothers’ Roles and Responsibilities – Crack Baby Aftermath and Navigating Educational Institutions – “I Was Just Cryin’ Out To God”: Recovery and the Spirituality of Struggle – Discussion: What the Mothers Made Me Think About – Contributor Bio—Dr. Laurence J. Parker – Index.

"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