Sister Citizen


Book Description

DIVFrom a highly respected thinker on race, gender, and American politics, a new consideration of black women and how distorted stereotypes affect their political beliefs/div




A Black Women's History of the United States


Book Description

The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this “groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States” (Ibram X. Kendi)—the perfect companion to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the United States. An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are—and have always been—instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women’s stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women’s unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today. A Black Women’s History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women’s lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women’s history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.




Women and the Historical Enterprise in America


Book Description

Looks at the works of women historians, from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II, and their impact on the social and cultural history of the United States.




Unsettling the Bildungsroman


Book Description

Unsettling the Bildungsroman combines genre and cultural theory and offers a cross-ethnic comparative approach to the tradition of the female novel of development and the American coming-of-age narrative. Examines the work of Jamaica Kincaid, Sandra Cisneros, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Audre Lorde.




Women of Color


Book Description

A long-awaited addition to the literature, this important new volume comprehensively addresses mental health issues relevant to women of color and presents guidelines for state-of-the-art treatment. Chapters illustrate the interaction of gender and ethnicity in mental health theory and practice, and discuss how cultural relevance and gender sensitivity can and must be incorporated into clinical work. The contributors are experts with extensive clinical experience with the specific groups of women they discuss, and many are themselves members of these groups, adding a unique and valuable dimension to their work. Inclusive in its approach and rich with illustrative case examples, WOMEN OF COLOR covers issues that affect both familiar and frequently overlooked groups of women. Emphasizing the heterogeneity of women of color, the book begins with in-depth discussions of cultural imperatives relevant to the mental health treatment of African American, American Indian, Asian American, Latina/Hispanic, and East and West Indian women. The second section provides a thorough review of the major theoretical orientations to psychotherapy and their applicability to women of color. The contributors critically assess the utilization of psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, family systems, feminist, and integrative approaches, and provide clinical guidelines for the application of each. Focusing on clinical management that incorporates a sensitivity to ethnicity, culture and gender, chapters also discuss the psychopharmacologic treatment of women of color. The diversity that exists among women of color is reflected in the final section's thoughtful examination of the mental health needs of such special populations as professional women, lesbians, mixed-race women, battered women, and refugee women. The stressors endured by women who are culturally stigmatized and/or institutionally disadvantaged are explored, and clear guidelines for working with these women are presented. Filling a significant gap in the literature, WOMEN OF COLOR is a major new resource for all mental health professionals, from students to seasoned practitioners. Accessibly written, it also serves as an excellent classroom text for courses in the psychology of women, women's studies, and gender studies.




Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege


Book Description

This fascinating story of Amanda America Dickson, born the privileged daughter of a white planter and an unconsenting slave in antebellum Georgia, shows how strong-willed individuals defied racial strictures for the sake of family. Kent Anderson Leslie uses the events of Dickson's life to explore the forces driving southern race and gender relations from the days of King Cotton through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and New South eras. Although legally a slave herself well into her adolescence, Dickson was much favored by her father and lived comfortably in his house, receiving a genteel upbringing and education. After her father died in 1885 Dickson inherited most of his half-million dollar estate, sparking off two years of legal battles with white relatives. When the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the will, Dickson became the largest landowner in Hancock County, Georgia, and the wealthiest black woman in the post-Civil War South. Kent Anderson Leslie's portrayal of Dickson is enhanced by a wealth of details about plantation life; the elaborate codes of behavior for men and women, blacks and whites in the South; and the equally complicated circumstances under which racial transgressions were sometimes ignored, tolerated, or even accepted.




Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics


Book Description

Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics brings together groundbreaking essays that speak to the relationship between Asian American feminisms, feminist of color work, and transnational feminist scholarship. This collection, featuring work by both senior and rising scholars, considers topics including the politics of visibility, histories of Asian American participation in women of color political formations, accountability for Asian American “settler complicities” and cross-racial solidarities, and Asian American community-based strategies against state violence as shaped by and tied to women of color feminisms. Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics provides a deep conceptual intervention into the theoretical underpinnings of Asian American studies; ethnic studies; women’s, gender, and sexual studies; as well as cultural studies in general.




American Muslim Women


Book Description

"Focusing on women, who sometimes move outside of their ethnic Muslim spaced and interact with other Muslim ethnic groups in search of gender justice, this ethnographic study of African American and South Asian immigrant Muslims in Chicago and Atlanta explores how Islamic ideas of racial harmony amd equality create hopeful possibilities in an American society that remains challenged by race and class inequalities."--Page 4 of cover.




Black Women in America


Book Description

Nominated for the 1995 Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology A provocative, insightful volume, Black Women in America offers an interdisciplinary study of black women′s historic activism, representation in literature and popular media, self-constructed images, and current psychosocial challenges. This new work by outstanding scholars in the field of race and gender studies explores the ways in which black women have constantly reconstructed and transformed alien definitions of black womanhood. Black women have an image of themselves that differs from those others impose. Collectively, the contributors to this anthology demonstrate that such socially constructed images hide the complexities and ambiguities, the challenges, and the joys experienced in the real lives of black women. Multifaceted in its approach, Black Women in America is certain to stimulate debate, stretch minds, and spark future research. Black Women in America is a welcome resource for scholars and students in African American or Ethnic Studies, Women′s Studies, Sociology, and Psychology. "The volume can be helpful in stimulating questions and discussion for students in African American studies." --Choice "Black Women in America combines social history with contemporary analysis in one of the most thoughtful of scholarly compendia I have ever seen. It will be useful to scholars who teach history, sociology, African American studies, and women′s studies, but also to any American interested in a deeper and broader understanding of America′s past, present, and future." --Sarah Susannah Willie, Colby College, Maine "At a time when several anthologies of essays by and about black women are hitting the shelves, Kim Marie Vaz′s volume boasts an unusual and inventive mix of topics. It treats a range of historical eras and geographical locations. . . . The apt emphasis on resistance rather than victimization is apparent throughout the essays I read; it provides an excellent focal point. . . . In all, Vaz′s editorial contribution is admirable. She has collected an impressively wide-ranging group of essays on the history, sociology, and culture of black women. Interdisciplinary in its approach and sound in its scholarship, the volume will be welcomed by scholars and students in African American studies and women′s studies in particular, but also history, sociology, and political science." --Cheryl Ann Wall, Rutgers University




Ain't I a Beauty Queen?


Book Description

"Black is Beautiful!" The words were the exuberant rallying cry of a generation of black women who threw away their straightening combs and adopted a proud new style they called the Afro. The Afro, as worn most famously by Angela Davis, became a veritable icon of the Sixties. Although the new beauty standards seemed to arise overnight, they actually had deep roots within black communities. Tracing her story to 1891, when a black newspaper launched a contest to find the most beautiful woman of the race, Maxine Leeds Craig documents how black women have negotiated the intersection of race, class, politics, and personal appearance in their lives. Craig takes the reader from beauty parlors in the 1940s to late night political meetings in the 1960s to demonstrate the powerful influence of social movements on the experience of daily life. With sources ranging from oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activists and men and women who stood on the sidelines to black popular magazines and the black movement press, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? will fascinate those interested in beauty culture, gender, class, and the dynamics of race and social movements.