The Politics of Black Domesticity in Martin R. Delany's Blake, or the Huts of America

This article exam-ines the political significance, and the limitations, of the representa-tion of the Black patriarchal fig-ure in Martin R. Delany's Blake, or the Huts of America, and how the (re)writing of Black domes-ticity is central to the novel's blueprint for Black citizenship. While Delany's novel imagines a political coalition founded upon a Black domestic order, the representation of the Black patriarchy delimits Black female agency as it also reemphasizes the gendered hierarchy within domesticity.