ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 investigates how African-American girlhood and the Western age-based categories of child, adolescent and adult inform Precious’ coming-of-age narrative. The chapter considers how the historical framing of African-American children as nonchildren disrupts White Western representations of coming-of-age. The chapter begins by analysing how the child is depicted within the film. It argues that as the Black child is framed as nonchild, it is divorced from White Western narratives of childhood innocence. After illustrating how the Black child is separated from this White Western framework, the chapter outlines how broader stereotypical framings of African-American women are applied to the Black girl and Black youths. Centrally, this chapter argues that as the life stages of childhood, adolescence and adulthood become blurred, the linear framework of the coming-of-age narrative is problematized within the film.
