2024/04/02 by Monica Styles · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Early Modern Women Writers #Latin American and Latino Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/10609164.2024.2350864
openalex publication_date 2024/04/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Úrsula de Jesús’s Vida puts her life story in dialogue with a broader Afrodiasporic feminist tradition and community. Úrsula’s discourse articulates her liberation through eloquent rage, defined by Brittney Cooper as Black women’s refusal to be relegated to an inferior position. Though imitatio is a common trope among Christian mystics, Úrsula uses the trope to represent her positionality as a moral authority because of her Blackness. In doing so Úrsula refuses to accept the inherent anti-Blackness of prevailing arguments that erase the possibility that she could be fully human because of her Blackness. As she repeats and inverts hegemonic interpretations of Christian doctrine, Úrsula achieves a nuanced critique of racial hierarchies. This paper highlights how Úrsula’s depiction of her suffering as a donada and her work as a healer is a Black feminist discourse that calls for a reimagining of racial hierarchies. Úrsula sustains a Black feminist critique in her discussion of suffering she faced individually and as part of a broader Afrodiasporic community, Black feminist imitatio and a rhetoric of healing rage that effects change within a system designed to deny Black women’s humanity.