Confronting The Over-sexualization of Afro-Latina Women in The Bluest Eye and The Poet X

Abstract

Afro-Latina women experience over-sexualization within contemporary society in ways that their white, female counterparts do not experience. Since the Reconstruction era, black women have been stereotyped as being promiscuous and oversexed. These sexualized stereotypes have carried weight within society for generations and have begun to encroach on other minority races, such as Latina women. Within their novels, The Bluest Eye and The Poet X, Toni Morrison and Elizabeth Acevedo do not shy away from discussing sex, sexualized stereotypes, and how sex impacts young women of color. Instead, they have confronted over-sexualization in their coming-of-age novels about Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl living in Loraine, Ohio during the 1940s, and Xiomara Batista, a young Dominican teenager living in Harlem, New York during the 2000s. Both authors utilize the complicated world of a teenage girl in a society that is accepting of negative sexualized stereotypes and challenge the over-sexualization through their main characters. This thesis analyzes how both authors confront the over-sexualization of Afro-Latina women to give a voice to young women who may be suffering in silence, and who are struggling to navigate a world that tells them they are only valued for what their body can give to a man.