“Girlfriends—There, Through Thick and Thin!”: African American Female Sisterhood and the Quest for Happiness

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Abstract

As the “embodiment of #BlackGirlMagic” (Bonner 2016), Mara Brock Akil has breathed life into creative works in television that celebrate the diversity, beauty, and richness that reside within African American women. Her career has been driven by an undying commitment to create and develop characters that are “unapologetically black,” or as Brock Akil prefers “black on purpose” (Smith 2015). Brock Akil has used her power to create a space where narratives about raced, gendered, and classed experiences are foregrounded in ways that have been all too rare (Vejnoska 2016). She has gained “a tremendous amount of power in the industry” over the course of her career, which is “almost unprecedented for a woman in Hollywood” (Vejnoska 2016), let alone an African American woman. Her career began in 1994, where she quickly rose through the ranks in the television industry. Brock Akil has been an assistant, producer, writer, and executive producer on television shows such as The Sinbad Show (1993–1994), South Central (1999), Moesha (1996–2001), The Jamie Foxx Show (1996–2001), Girlfriends (2000–2008), The Game (2006–2009; 2011–2015), Being Mary Jane (2013–2017), and Black Lightning (2016–present). Despite not having reached mainstream appeal to the same extent as the amazingly successful and talented Shonda Rhimes, Brock Akil has carved out a much-needed niche in television. A critique of her different shows offers further evidence that she is an underappreciated writer and producer (Johnson 2018) whose work should be valued and recognized for the important role it has played in redefining depictions of African American identity and culture in television....

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Representations of Black Womanhood on Television Being Mara Brock Akil

First Page

13

Last Page

32

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