To Calmly Rest: Frances E. W. Harper’s Sensational Black Disability Poetics

Abstract: This article argues that Frances E. W. Harper’s poetics generate a broad understanding of disability, one that accounts for entanglements of race and structural debilitation. Drawing on Black disability studies, a field that examines intertwining oppressions of ableism and racism, the article shows how Harper’s poetry challenges expectations that Black people perform strength and resilience while they survive debilitating oppressive systems. Her work resists the reductive association of Blackness with deficiency while refusing to ignore the material effects of racial capitalism, which has long extracted from Black bodies while denying them care and rest. Centering pain and fatigue not only as symbols for oppression but also as material realities shaped by slavery and systemic violence, Harper’s poetics reveal disability to be a site of resistance and furthermore assert that interdependent care is crucial for futures of liberation and justice.