Un-"Freak"ing Black Female Selfhood: Grotesque-Erotic Agency and Ecofeminist Unity in Sapphire's Push

[...]the body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world" (317). According to Bakhtin, the grotesque body is a self without autonomy or agency, an exploited thing.\n By engaging her character in grassroots sociopolitical activism that emerges in reaction to a basically indifferent white capitalist social system, Sapphire creates a type of character whose "firm grounding in self and identity" clearly demonstrates that "choosing 'wellness' is an act of political resistance" (hooks, Sisters 14).