The Welfare Mother and the Fat Poor: Stereotypical Images and the Success Narrative in Sapphire's Push

Authors

  • Claudia Müller

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.162

Keywords:

Push, Fat Poor, Welfare Mother, poverty, poorness, success narrative

Abstract

This article explores how Sapphire's novel Push “(1996) operates and complicates stereotypical images about the poor—Welfare Mother and Fat Poor—for simultaneously propagating and criticizing the success narrative it employs. The article introduces the image of the Fat Poor, discusses Push“ as a success narrative, and analyzes the novel's use of the image of the Fat Poor limiting this narrative.

Author Biography

Claudia Müller

Claudia Müller has studied American Studies, Journalism Studies, and Political Sciences at the University of Leipzig, graduating in 2008. Currently, she is writing her dissertation on "The Image of the Fat Poor in Contemporary American Literature and Culture" (working title) at the Institute of English and American Studies at TU Dresden. Besides her interest in poverty, class, bodies, and obesity, other research interests of Claudia are violence, popular culture, movies, boxing, food, as well as literary-critical poverty studies, discourse analysis, intersectionality, fat studies, and New Historicist approaches applied to contemporary texts.

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Published

2013-05-22

How to Cite

Müller, Claudia. “The Welfare Mother and the Fat Poor: Stereotypical Images and the Success Narrative in Sapphire’s Push”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, May 2013, doi:10.5283/copas.162.

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2013)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.