This manuscript, Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength, focuses upon the model of identity known as the StrongBlackWoman. Characterized by the three cardinal virtues of caregiving, independence, and emotional strength/regulation, the StrongBlackWoman is a figure typified by extraordinary capacities for caregiving and for suffering without complaint, a pervasive cultural identity that defines – and confines –ways of being in the world for women of African descent.

While there has been a marked increase in scholarship on the StrongBlackWoman over the past decade in the social sciences and race/gender studies, there has been little engagement with this construct within Christian theology and pastoral studies. This lack of discourse is troubling given the church’s prominent role in socializing black women and girls into the mythology of strength. It is further alarming due to the archetype’s potential health implications. African American women face epidemic rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and HIV/AIDS, and have higher morbidity and mortality rates than any other racial-gender group for nearly every major cause of death. Given the StrongBlackWoman’s central characteristic of providing care for others at the expense of one’s health, its internalization may be a causal factor in these health disparities.

The aim of Too Heavy a Yoke, then, is to heighten pastoral awareness about the inordinate burden that the demand for strength places upon black women. This project has a fourfold mission: (1) describing the characteristics of the StrongBlackWoman and its impact upon the well-being of black women; (2) explaining the etiology and function of this myth in America; (3) articulating the unique significance of this phenomenon for the Christian church and the responsibility of pastoral caregivers in confronting and alleviating its existence; and (4) providing a model for liberative pastoral care with black women.