McCaskill examines three different groundbreaking texts of the second half of the twentieth century: Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman (1970), Lucille Clifton’s Generations (1976), and Patricia Bell-Scott et al.’s Double Stitch (1991). Working backwards and forwards from these three texts, McCaskill’s chapter analyzes ways that Black women turned the tables on previous representations of themselves by Black men and hegemonic others as subordinate citizens, matriarchs, and ciphers.