A Journey towards Womanist Agency in debbie tucker green’s <i>trade</i>

Abstract In her plays, debbie tucker green depicts how Black women transcend sheer subjection and achieve autonomy to deal with colonial oppression, socioeconomic inequalities, and male hegemony. In her 2005 play trade , she addresses interlocking sexism, classism, and racism that have subjugated Black women. tucker green creates a single-sex atmosphere in which white female sexuality is not celebrated at the expense of Black female/male identity and subverts hegemonic masculinity and racial objectification through shattered stereotyping. This article scrutinizes tucker green’s trade by means of the concepts of womanism and agency as strategies to oppose the hegemonic racial, sexual, and social norms, and to examine the development of female (subject) identity. Concerned with both racial and sexual survival, womanism is a strategy employed by Black women to achieve agency through the empowering dynamics of “audacity” and “communitarianism.” Judith Butler’s concept of agency is depicted through the stereotyped characters – Regular, Novice, and Local – and their subversion. tucker green’s proclivity for a structural experimentalism resists stereotyped and coded hegemonic behaviour. She employs cross-race and double casting techniques to challenge sexual identities determined by dominant sexual ideologies. The process of transition to agency and the gradual movement from subjection to resistance is observable not only in the metatheatrical structure of the play but also in the performative language of the characters as constructive steps towards subjectivity.