Everyday Survival and Invisible Resistance: Working-Class Black Womanhood, Trauma, and Resilience in Terry McMillan's Mama

This article examines McMillan’s Mama (1987) as a critical yet under-theorized reflection on working-class Black womanhood. While most criticism values narratives focused on spectacular trauma or overt resistance, this study scrutinizes everyday survival as a central way of claiming agency. It argues that Mildred Peacock’s experiences are primarily shaped by economic marginalization, the burdens of motherhood, and cumulative psychological toll. The article proposes a new, more expansive definition of resistance that moves beyond dominant liberation paradigms. Using close content analysis grounded in Black feminist thought, womanism, sociocritique, and psychoanalytic theory through a trauma studies lens, this paper investigates how welfare dependency, motherhood, and emotional endurance both constrain and enable strategies of survival. The findings show that Mama challenges the literary canon by foregrounding persistence, care, and unresolved struggle as key forms of Black women’s agency.