Black Women’s Fictive Kin Networks and the Sisters in the House
3 min readFeb 23, 2020
By Hettie V. Williams
African American fictive kinship arose out of a response to the chaos of enslavement. Slavery as an institution marred African family ties and their sense of community once defined by blood ties. The separation of blood kin from their children and families made the reliance on fictive kin a measure of survival. This phrase fictive…