“Come to yo’ Grandma, honey. Set in her lap lak yo’ use tuh. Yo’ Nanny wouldn’t harm a hair uh yo’ head. She don’t want nobody else to do it neither if she kin help it. Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de n---- man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De n---- woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!” (p. 14)

Janie’s grandmother talks to her about marriage and womanhood after she and Johnny Taylor kiss. Her grandmother looks weathered and sad as she speaks to Janie and says that she wishes that she had more time before Janie was thrust into womanhood. In the above excerpt from the novel, her grandmother not only speaks to Janie about womanhood in general but also specifically about what womanhood might look like for a Black woman. There is an intersectionality of labor and womanhood at play here.

Explore this concept of invisible labor (the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has a new exhibit entitled “All Work, No Pay”)...how might you make it visible?