Letters To Mammy: Dear Madea

a substack collaboration with Camille

and

Jan 23, 2025

Today’s post is a collab with
Camille
, the truly gifted author of this. newsletter here on the stacks.

Camille and I have both written about the Mammy stereotype, and after a (pretty amazing) chat, we decided to collaborate on a letter series addressing the stereotype’s different portrayals in film. I chose to write to Madea, the iconic character created and played by Tyler Perry in a commercially successful 12-film franchise.1 That letter is below.

Camille wrote her letter to Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. You can read Camille’s letter here.

Film stills capturing the character of Madea. First photo depicts Madea in a blue dress and pearls, smirking. The second, a red dress with Madea mid laughter. The third, another blue dress with Madea cocking the hammer of a handgun.

Dear Madea,

I’m gon’ refer to you as Madea— even though that is just the name of the costume you wear. The person beneath that costume is Tyler Perry. And the person beneath that .. is a lost boy.

I’ve never met you, but, parasocially speaking, it’s clear (to me at least) that you’ve got a bone to pick with Tyler Perry’s maternal figures.

You don’t know me, Madea, and I don’t know Tyler. But I do know you. You invited yourself over enough times to stay in the background of our BBQ’s. You lurked in corners with pots full of hot grits and hot quips. Both of ‘em bubbling up in scenes where we didn’t have to suspend our disbelief to see everyone’s trauma played out on screen. You ruined sleepovers with your rape scenes. Ruined a generation with your incessant calls of “hellerrrrrr” (precisely because you remind me of a girl that I once knew).

But maybe that is harsh.

You are loud, brazen, and undeniably unforgettable.

But unforgettable does not equate to being forgivable.

Madea, you are the embodiment of oppressive gender stereotypes. I see in your outfit, the mammy’s unsexed servitude; in your countenance the sapphire’s vitriolic anger; and in your costars the oversexualized jezebel and the dependent welfare queen. You protect these doormat women, these fallen-from-glory girls. But not before the beatings. But not before the shame. Protection is never as proactive as all that for Black women in Madea movies.

The movies you star in are all about Black women. We are your sole focus. Your target demographic. Your costars (but never your wig consultants). You are one of the few who says “Hey sis. I’m talking to YOU. Specifically.” I’ll give you that.

Delita Martin, “New Beginnings” (2017) acrylic, relief printing, lithography, charcoal, decorative paper, and hand-stitching on paper

But you don’t see us. You don’t know us. You hold a camera, and through it, you show the world a version of us that is flat, desperate, and broken. The women in your films are never whole. They’re always scrambling to be saved, always caught in the middle of some melodramatic breakdown. The only cure being the protection of Madea and a Good Man™.

But what are you supposed to protect those women from? Because in you I see another weapon. You are a grotesque parody of our strength. You’re a joke made at our expense, dressed up in a housecoat and wielding a pistol.

You’ve spent decades advising Black women in bad wigs and worse situations. You’ve turned our trauma into a punchline, and the abuse we withstand into an entrance fee. You’ve shoved caricatures of our pain into movies where Black women in peril find Jesus, or some light-skinned dick, but ideally both, and call that a resolution.

But what do we really gain from that? We the Black women who have actually fallen from glory. We that actually have been laid low by the state, and some man, and his momma, and the life that they all dreamed up before we ever arrived on the scene. What are we supposed to learn? That our lives are only worth the suffering we can endure before we’re rewarded with a crumb of male validation?

When Madea takes the stage, Black women disappear. We are flattened under the weight of your bodysuit, reduced to the sound of your cackles, your threats, your martyrdom. You are the kind of mother who never rests (unless she’s plotting), the kind of grandmother who holds her family together (with threats and fried chicken). You are every stereotype they’ve ever hurled at us, rolled into one over-the-top performance.

Do you even realize the damage you’ve done?

Delita Martin, “Another Kind of Blues” (2018) acrylic, charcoal, decorative papers, hand-stitching, and liquid gold leaf on paper

And the worst part? People love you for all of it.

Is this how Black men see us? How they want us to be seen? To see ourselves? And while your likeness rakes in millions, we’re left to carry the burden of the caricature you’ve become. But where’s our peace? Where’s our humanity? Where’s the space for us to exist outside of struggle? Not in a Madea movie.

So no, Madea, I can’t honor you. I won’t. You are the mask that keeps us from being seen. And to those who’ve laughed, cried, and found solace in your chaos—ask yourselves: what, if anything, have you decided about yourself and the Black women around you after almost 20 years of watching Madea? Have you consumed as much about our joy? Do you know the stories of your own grandmother as well as you know Madea's?

But ... tell Tyler I said great job on 6 Triple 8 though. It’s amazing the range one can acquire when they start off with a story about the fullness of Black women’s courage, rather than the depths of her despair.

With Righteous Indignation,

Bethany Nicole

Love y’all. Mean it. If you love me back, Buy Me A Book

It took 6 months and 10 drafts to get my book proposal ready for The Hero and the Whore. I’m working on my next nonfiction book proposal and, so far, it’s been two months and I’m still working on the first draft. These things take time. My agent walked me through my first book proposal and showed me edits that needed to be made and things to keep my eye…

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