Tricia Rose is an Africana Studies Professor at Brown University whose book Longing to Tell does a brilliant job of addressing the history, tragedy, and silences black women endure. In this analysis she connects the black woman experience to their ability to be in intimate relationships. She takes a particular interest in the way silences hinder a community from moving forward. In her work she sees black intimacy as a freeing agent for the wounds that black people have endured. Her view is that by hiding stories of pain or unhappiness, black women limit themselves from truly loving freely. And by doing this they also in a sense hinder the entire community from being able to learn from the hardships that have occurred.
\nFor Rose, it is the act of staying silent that stops black women from being their true selves. She also speaks of the fact that stereotypes placed on black women by popular society plays a role in the aspect of intimacy for black women. She says in her book,
\n“In the mid-twentieth century, urban sociological studies on race (such as the infamous Moynihan Report) relied on myths about black women’s sexual dominance (e.g. matriarchy, when viewed from a patriarchal point of view) as the reason for the decline of the black family…Such political strategies discourage black women from expressing desires or sharing experiences that might prove racist sociologists right.” (Rose 2003)
\nShe addresses these societal pressures that contribute to black women's silences. Her point is that in order to have healthy black intimacy, there needs to be an opening up of sorts. And that with this opening up of telling ones story, intimacy can improve.
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\nCompiled by white lesbian JR Roberts in 1981, this book sought to counteract the overpowering whiteness in lesbian and women’s studies research by demonstration an abundance of primary work by or about black lesbians. Using, she curated an exceptional collection of over 300 primary works and organized them in six categories i.e.: “Lives & Lifestyle,” “Oppression, Resistance, and Liberation,” “Literature and Criticism,” “Music and Musicians,” Periodicals,” and “Research, Reference, and Popular Studies.” It also includes an Appendix, citing works about black lesbian “witch hunts” to provide a starting point for research on this aspect of black lesbian history.
wNot much information about the author, JR Roberts, pseudonym for Barbara Rae Henry, could be located. However, It is known that Roberts was involved with the Circle of Lesbian Indexers, the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and the New Alexandria Lesbian Library. In the books introduction she laments that the idea for this project was a response to frustrating difficulties in locating material on black lesbians in a lesbian history project she was directing at Goddard-Cambridge Graduate School.
For this project, her methodology was perusing through “large quantities of material always on the alert for Black lesbian references…” as well as soliciting through word-of-mouth and publishing classified ads in lesbian periodicals during the 1970s for lesbian and gay researchers to alert her with sources on black lesbians.
It’s a valuable resource to the disciplines of women’s studies, queer studies, and black studies, in which it was the first bibliography that centralized black lesbian material in one accessible source. Today, it still remains to be the only book of its kind for black lesbian material. However, due to it being published in 1981, an update to the text is necessary for it does not include works beyond the 1970s as there is a substantial amount of of primary and secondary sources that can be added to this text. Since the bulk of its bibliographies are primary sources, it was not beneficial in providing secondary sources for my collection of bibliographies. But it is a critical tool in necessitating further research, as it is often cited by scholars researching black lesbians.
Joanna Schoen is currently a professor at Rutgers University and her work center on woman’s health and reproductive care. In her book, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, Schoen focuses her studies on the role that birth control, sterilization, and abortion played in public health and welfare policies between the 1920s and the 1970s. Schoen’s research focuses on the widespread practice of compulsory sterilization in North Carolina, its justification by policy maker and the eventual expansions of such programs. Like many of the scholarship before hers, Schoen expands on the history and meaning of Eugenics but she goes one step further by specifically detailing the role of the welfare state in the proliferation of compulsory sterilization and birth control in the poor Black neighborhoods of North Carolina. Schoen’s introduction, “A great thing for poor folks,” begins with the story of an African American girl named Estelle and her reproductive experience that began in 1948 at the young age of twelve. It is detailed how her race, socio-economic status and lack of access to adequate care resulted in multiple unwanted pregnancies that furthered her difficulties as a poor woman of color. It is a response to this cycle that ‘justified’ the need to implement birth control and sterilization for women that received governmental benefits such as welfare. Schoen details how Black motherhood was pathologized and seen as the source of the problem instead of being a result of inadequate social policies.
\nSince the book was published in 2005, almost eighty-five years since the implementation of sterilization practice, Schoen had the unique opportunity to analyze more current conversations surrounding the compulsory sterilization of Black women. The epilogue, “From the footnotes to the Headlines: Sterilization Apologies and their lessons,” details the process that led to a public apology by North Carolina governor Mike Easley. When, “the Winston – Salem Journal launched a series entitled ‘Against Their Will’ that chronicled the history of North Carolina’s eugenic sterilization program,” (241) the ‘shameful era’ in the history of the United States was uncovered and undeniable. As other governors were forced into public apologies it became apparent that education and knowledge of these incidences had to be more readily available in order to remember the legacy of state sterilizations and their harmful impact on Black women.
\nSchoen’s book, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, is valuable to the scholarship of compulsory sterilization in the United States as it pertains to Black women because Schoen utilizes anecdotes, research and focuses on all the factors that enabled those entrenched in the welfare sate to be sterilized through the justification of the maintenance of public health. Since it is a more contemporary account of the history of sterilization and birth control, Schoen’s books benefits from a plentiful sources and an ability to retrospectively analyze the social impacts of sterilization in the communities that establish sterilization programs, specifically in North Carolina.
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\nHowever, surveying black female performance is not McMillan’s interest here. Her project raises the stakes by pushing beyond the paradigm of racial affliction in which there is often either erasure or over-abundance of race. The black performers analyzed transform their own bodies into a tabula rasa, an elastic, flexible surface, which she calls objecthood, in order to engage with discourses besides blackness and womanhood. By doing so, she argues, they gain access to a wider subversive discourse of cultural production.
\nMcMillan relies on important aspects of Daphne Brooks' work on the ephemeral nature of 19th c. black female performance which often made them disappear as subject from history. In response black women in Brooks and McMillan act themselves into history. McMillan relies on Brooks concept of \"polymorphus\" bodies which performance use to destabilize categorization.
\nMcMillian examines two 19th century performers, fugitive slave Ellen Craft who impersonated her white master in order to escape and Joice Heth, who performed as the ancient relic “George Washington’s nursemaid” and claimed to be 161 years old. Her two 20th century subjects are conceptualist artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, and abstractionist painter Howardena Pindell. These black female performers, using their bodies a dense, layered surface or text, work to invert the power of cultural embodiment and cultural creation.
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", "tags": [ { "tag": "code gibberish" } ], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2015-12-17T17:19:48Z", "dateModified": "2019-11-12T16:45:12Z" } }, { "key": "T8RSFQ69", "version": 1836, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 396991, "name": "BWA2015", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/bwa2015", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/396991/items/T8RSFQ69", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/bwa2015/items/T8RSFQ69", "type": "text/html" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 2723222, "username": "bukayo16", "name": "", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/bukayo16", "type": "text/html" } } }, "lastModifiedByUser": { "id": 156927, "username": "kh2208", "name": "Kim F. Hall", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/kh2208", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "T8RSFQ69", "version": 1836, "itemType": "note", "note": "Introduction: The Myth of the Black Matriarchy
\nThis collection provides a comprehensive examination of the critiques of the concept of black matriarchy. The concept of “Black Matriarchy” was brought to public political consciousness by Daniel P. Moynihan. In The Negro Family, the Case for National Action, Moynihan argues that black matriarchy is a pathology in the black community because it has caused the emasculation and decline of black men. To construct his argument, Moynihan draws extensively on the works of scholar, E. Franklin Frazier; in particular, Frazier’s sociological and historical study of black families in The Negro Family in the United States. In the book, Frazier uses historical evidence to claim that the black family is matriarchal.
\nIn my collection, I explore the early wave critiques that were published in the early 1960s to late 1970s in reaction to the Moynihan Report. My sources are the most popular and compelling critiques of the idea of black matriarchy. A majority of my sources are ethnographic and sociological studies on the black family; I also include direct critiques of E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro Family in the United States. My collection focuses on three major critiques: the influence of structural racism, historical inaccuracy, and inaccurate methodology.
\nThe first common critique amongst my sources is that Frazier’s historical evidence is inaccurate. In The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925, Gutman disproves Frazier’s historical evidence and claims that slavery did not disrupt the black family. Instead Gutman argues that black slaves adapted to the toxic conditions of slavery and were able to create family structures. The second common critique amongst my sources is the critique of Frazier and Moynihan’s methodology. Laudner, Dietrich and Dill argue that black families cannot be compares to white families. Dill pushes for a new methodology to analyze the black families. The final critique that is represented among almost every source but particularly in Roberts Staples piece is the influence of structural racism on the black family. Moynihan complete disregard of the negative effects of racism was heavily critiqued. Finally, I also added a work by Curwood because of its unique critique of Frazier’s work. All in all, these themes provide a compelling argument against the Moynihan’s claim of black matriarchy.
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\nTrue democracy requires true representation. Throughout the course of history, black women have struggled to gain social, economic, and political representation and recognition; this struggle, and their underrepresentation in the formal sphere of American politics, denies them access to public debates and policy development. There are various examples though of black women’s active participation in resistance movements. Beginning with written accounts of the horridness of slavery, black women have continuously voiced their experiences of discrimination of their race and gender. Their participation in these kinds of informal sites of resistance through community and grassroots activism demonstrates that black women are likely to advocate for critical issues and policies that influence their social, political, and economic experiences. Thus, the underrepresentation in the formal political arena in America is detrimental to the continuous development and progress of black women. Black women’s participation is essential because black women advocate for black women’s issues and it is important to recognize their continual ambitious struggle.
\nThis annotated bibliography works to understand the historical and theoretical development of black women in American politics and emphasizes sources that highlight why black women’s representation is essential in advancing their social, economic, and political equality. Some authors, specifically Simien, recognize that there is a lack of literature that examines the complexities of black women in American politics. This annotated bibliography therefore organizes a diverse range of both primary and secondary sources, which highlight black women’s specific relation to society because of the oppressions they experience due to the intersection of their race and gender.
\nDrawing on political science studies, primary sources, and analytical works, the annotated bibliography seeks to understand the origins and impact of the underrepresentation of black women in American politics (Shames, Brown). In addition, it highlights key examples of black women’s activism in both formally elected positions and through organizational movements that emphasize how critical their participation and advocacy is in championing certain rights that specifically impact the lives of black women and bringing issues, such as poverty, sexual violence, and forced sterilization, into public debate (Hamer, Chisholm, Combahee River Collective). Concerning the formal sphere of American politics, this annotated bibliography also examines the disadvantages black women face in becoming elected and once in office, the political decision making processes of black women, and theories on increasing black women’s representation (Darcy and Hadley).
\nUltimately, black women’s struggle throughout American history has encompassed both their private and public lives. Black women activists, advocates, and representatives have been instrumental in achieving policy priorities that are important to black women’s development, social mobility, and rights equality. These works demonstrate why it is essential black women continuously employ their political ambitions to participate in both the formal and informal American political sphere, champion rights, and speak out against the intersection of the oppressions of their race and gender.
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\n
This collection of sources focuses on the scholarly attempts to understand the (in)visibility of Black lesbian history and/or uncover and archive the history. Initially, I intended to annotate sources that documented the history of Black lesbianism in America. I became interested in this historical account, while attempting to understand myself as a queer woman of color in a homophobic racist society. The availability of a well-rounded text that accounts for Black female queerness can serve as personal vindication of one’s own existence and also posits a normalcy to one’s socially (and doubly) execrated identity. As I was constantly on the hunt for such material, it was not long before I realized how little research had been lent to the field. Most of what I found centered on white and Black male queerness and white lesbianism. I was even more surprised that no research has investigated the possibility of a female parallel to “Black men on the down-low.” For me, it seemed obvious that much of Black lesbian performance would be just as closeted if not more considering the multiple institutions of power that have governed Black women and their sexuality throughout history.
So the question of “where is Black lesbian history” morphed into “why isn’t there Black lesbian history?” On that note, the points of inquiry I sought to pursue for this project were: what are the factors contributing to the lack of research on Black lesbian studies? Which scholars are contributing to the recoupment and epistemology of Black lesbian history? What methodologies are employed in recovering the history? And which pedagogic disciplines are and are not contributing to this project?
In pursuit of scholarly sources that investigate my questions, I sought secondary sources from academic publications and peer-reviewed journals, as well as independent (often creative) projects venturing to curate a black lesbian past. In deciding which sources were appropriate for my collection, I struggled to identify a history-driven commonality between the texts since Black lesbian studies is so new and scholars were often approaching it with contemporary themes of inquiry. The one theme I could discern was the (in)visibility of Black lesbians. I found that scholars recognized a noticeable absence of Black lesbian consideration in virtually all genres of writing. For this reason, the sources I’ve included in this bibliographic collection from intellectual attempts to contextualize, record, and imagine a black lesbian history through film, literature, science, history, Black feminism, and queer theory. The authors I include clarify the factors that complicate a holistic approach to the study and several scholars offer recommendations on how to move past those hurdles. My bibliography highlights publications and authors that are most often referenced in the discursive studies of my topic. I’ve also extended the textual scope of this bibliography to research done on lesbianism in the Black diaspora. A non-annotated collection of digital archiving projects of Black lesbian history, and primary sources of black lesbian writings are assembled in a sub folder. I hope this bibliography will serve in facilitating further research by providing a one-stop-shop collection of sources that are vital to the development and expansion of the field.
Introduction [large print]
\nBlack Feminist Veganism
\nWe need radical Black feminism because interlocking of oppression are too often framed as disparate, fragmented, and better engaged with separately. Our identities, our collective political concerns, our communities deserve a critical lens that is informed by the interactions between multiple nexuses of power and oppression. Radical Black feminism insists that Black liberation cannot be thought out of the context of cisheteropatriarchy, that classism and environmental racism are permanently intertwined, that systems of violence acting upon marginalized bodies are inextricably linked to each other. This collection endeavors to locate food justice, food-based activism, and other struggles toward general environmental justice (from sustainable living choices to the non-human animal rights movement) within an explicitly Black feminist politic. Specifically, I have chosen to compile pieces that directly deal with politicized plant-based diets and Black feminist veganism as an emerging political force.
\n\n
In building this collection, I focused on compiling many different kinds of resources regarding the theoretical foundation, history, and concrete practices of Black feminist veganism. The starting point for this annotated bibliography is the lauded anthology Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak On Food, Identity, Health, and Society by Dr. A. Breeze Harper. Sistah Vegan, compiling the voices of Black women from multiple class, age, and geographic contexts, serves as the foundational text for this analysis since it represents the integrated emergence of a vegan politic that is truly Black and feminist. Dr. Harper has been instrumental to the contemporary development of Black feminist veganism and one of her scholarly talks, “Scars of Suffering and Healing: Black Feminist Vegan Perspective on Race, Neoliberal Whiteness, and Writing,” is also cited for this bibliography. To establish a historical context around Black women and food politics, I decided to cite Doris Witt’s Black Hunger: Soul Food and America. This piece is the only one from the bibliography that doesn’t specifically deal with plant-based diets. It does, however, document the history of African-American food politics and Black women’s bodies, exploring the significance of Black women in defining, representing, and being manipulated by a distinctly Black food tradition. I thought it would be useful to consider the historical interaction between food, politicization, and Black women while simultaneously investigating the radical political potential implicit to Black feminist veganism. What political power, historically, presently, and otherwise, do Black women wield in the context of a constantly shifting, and inextricably politicized, Black food culture?
\n\n
An independent documentary, Holistic Wellness for the Hip-Hop Generation, is used in this bibliography to examine the more mainstream iterations of Black women’s veganism. This documentary was specifically chosen because of Erykah Badu, a neo-soul singer, songwriter, and cultural icon, who is interviewed on her approach to Black veganism. Her focus on the health benefits of plant-based diets, and centralization of Black holistic wellness as a political mode, is indicative of the goals of the mainstream Afro-vegan movement and her performance of a particular, stylized, contemporary Afro-vegan femininity, what is colloquially referred to as being as “hotep” woman, highlights the intra-Black-vegan need for a feminist critical lens. The Toi Scott presentation, entitled “ALL Black Lives Matter: Exposing and Dismantling Transphobia and Heteronormativity in Mainstream Black ‘Conscious’ Plant-Based Dietary Movement,” further acknowledges the extensive marginalization within the mainstream Black vegan movement of LGBTQ folk invested in radical Black food politics. Similarly, Cathryn Bailey’s article “We Are What We Eat: Feminist Vegetarianism and the Reproduction of Racial Identity” is cited to emphasize the intra-feminist-vegan need for a race critical, radical Black lens. Both pieces can be read as illustrative instruments for the disparate political spaces (mainstream feminist-veganism and mainstream Black veganism respectively) that become richer, more politically sound, and generally analytically transformed by a radical Black feminist lens.
\nFinally, my last two Zotero resources deal with the concrete practices, lifestyles, and concerns of Black feminist vegans. Aphro-ism, Aph Ko’s politically-engaged blog site, encourages the continued development of a Black feminist vegan politic and features profiles on influential Black vegans, essays detailing the necessary intersections between feminism, anti-racism, food justice, and environmental justice, and accounts of the everyday lives and needs of Black feminist vegans. By Any Greens Necessary: A Revolutionary Guide for Black Women Who Want to Eat Great, Get Healthy, Lose Weight, and Look Phat, written by Tracye Lynn McQuirter, addresses the everyday lives of Black feminist vegans by compiling vegan recipes and detailed plant-based food practices with a distinctly politicized, Black female focus. Both of these works move Black feminist veganism from theory to praxis, political to personal, and guide those folk curious about this body of work into a newly-adopted Black feminist vegan lifestyle.
\n\n
If there is anything that I grasped from my research in this field, it’s that this is a newly emerging field of scholarship. Black feminist veganism is a political modality being imagined in this particular contemporary period, informed by an explicitly 21st-century context. Though it has deep roots in the history of Black food politics, Black feminist veganism reflects the concerns of this political moment, giving the materials a sharpness, freshness, and immense relevance. Though I’m not quite ready to permanently put cheeseburgers aside, this material has forced me to engage with how deeply my political analysis is shaped by the food I choose to eat. As of now, I am certainly theoretically united with radical Black feminist veganism. And as the scholarship continues to develop, producing increasingly more nuanced and convincing arguments for a politicized, plant-based diet, it’s only a matter of time before that theoretical alignment shifts to my dinner plate.
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\nBlack Feminist Veganism
\n\n
We need radical Black feminism because interlocking of oppression are too often framed as disparate, fragmented, and better engaged with separately. Our identities, our collective political concerns, our communities deserve a critical lens that is informed by the interactions between multiple nexuses of power and oppression. Radical Black feminism insists that Black liberation cannot be thought out of the context of cisheteropatriarchy, that classism and environmental racism are permanently intertwined, that systems of violence acting upon marginalized bodies are inextricably linked to each other. This collection endeavors to locate food justice, food-based activism, and other struggles toward general environmental justice (from sustainable living choices to the non-human animal rights movement) within an explicitly Black feminist politic. Specifically, I have chosen to compile pieces that directly deal with politicized plant-based diets and Black feminist veganism as an emerging political force.
\n\n
In building this collection, I focused on compiling many different kinds of resources regarding the theoretical foundation, history, and concrete practices of Black feminist veganism. The starting point for this annotated bibliography is the lauded anthology Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak On Food, Identity, Health, and Society by Dr. A. Breeze Harper. Sistah Vegan, compiling the voices of Black women from multiple class, age, and geographic contexts, serves as the foundational text for this analysis since it represents the integrated emergence of a vegan politic that is truly Black and feminist. Dr. Harper has been instrumental to the contemporary development of Black feminist veganism and one of her scholarly talks, “Scars of Suffering and Healing: Black Feminist Vegan Perspective on Race, Neoliberal Whiteness, and Writing,” is also cited for this bibliography. To establish a historical context around Black women and food politics, I decided to cite Doris Witt’s Black Hunger: Soul Food and America. This piece is the only one from the bibliography that doesn’t specifically deal with plant-based diets. It does, however, document the history of African-American food politics and Black women’s bodies, exploring the significance of Black women in defining, representing, and being manipulated by a distinctly Black food tradition. I thought it would be useful to consider the historical interaction between food, politicization, and Black women while simultaneously investigating the radical political potential implicit to Black feminist veganism. What political power, historically, presently, and otherwise, do Black women wield in the context of a constantly shifting, and inextricably politicized, Black food culture?
\n\n
An independent documentary, Holistic Wellness for the Hip-Hop Generation, is used in this bibliography to examine the more mainstream iterations of Black women’s veganism. This documentary was specifically chosen because of Erykah Badu, a neo-soul singer, songwriter, and cultural icon, who is interviewed on her approach to Black veganism. Her focus on the health benefits of plant-based diets, and centralization of Black holistic wellness as a political mode, is indicative of the goals of the mainstream Afro-vegan movement and her performance of a particular, stylized, contemporary Afro-vegan femininity, what is colloquially referred to as being as “hotep” woman, highlights the intra-Black-vegan need for a feminist critical lens. The Toi Scott presentation, entitled “ALL Black Lives Matter: Exposing and Dismantling Transphobia and Heteronormativity in Mainstream Black ‘Conscious’ Plant-Based Dietary Movement,” further acknowledges the extensive marginalization within the mainstream Black vegan movement of LGBTQ folk invested in radical Black food politics. Similarly, Cathryn Bailey’s article “We Are What We Eat: Feminist Vegetarianism and the Reproduction of Racial Identity” is cited to emphasize the intra-feminist-vegan need for a race critical, radical Black lens. Both pieces can be read as illustrative instruments for the disparate political spaces (mainstream feminist-veganism and mainstream Black veganism respectively) that become richer, more politically sound, and generally analytically transformed by a radical Black feminist lens.
\n\n
Finally, my last two Zotero resources deal with the concrete practices, lifestyles, and concerns of Black feminist vegans. Aphro-ism, Aph Ko’s politically-engaged blog site, encourages the continued development of a Black feminist vegan politic and features profiles on influential Black vegans, essays detailing the necessary intersections between feminism, anti-racism, food justice, and environmental justice, and accounts of the everyday lives and needs of Black feminist vegans. By Any Greens Necessary: A Revolutionary Guide for Black Women Who Want to Eat Great, Get Healthy, Lose Weight, and Look Phat, written by Tracye Lynn McQuirter, addresses the everyday lives of Black feminist vegans by compiling vegan recipes and detailed plant-based food practices with a distinctly politicized, Black female focus. Both of these works move Black feminist veganism from theory to praxis, political to personal, and guide those folk curious about this body of work into a newly-adopted Black feminist vegan lifestyle.
\n\n
If there is anything that I grasped from my research in this field, it’s that this is a newly emerging field of scholarship. Black feminist veganism is a political modality being imagined in this particular contemporary period, informed by an explicitly 21st-century context. Though it has deep roots in the history of Black food politics, Black feminist veganism reflects the concerns of this political moment, giving the materials a sharpness, freshness, and immense relevance. Though I’m not quite ready to permanently put cheeseburgers aside, this material has forced me to engage with how deeply my political analysis is shaped by the food I choose to eat. As of now, I am certainly theoretically united with radical Black feminist veganism. And as the scholarship continues to develop, producing increasingly more nuanced and convincing arguments for a politicized, plant-based diet, it’s only a matter of time before that theoretical alignment shifts to my dinner plate.
\n\n
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The Sapphire and \"Angry Black Women\" Stereotype Bibliography
\nby Manuela Perez
\nThe Sapphire, also known as the angry black woman, is primarily known as a woman who emasculates Black men with verbal assaults, is loud and animated, and is always angry with the world. These stereotypes are rooted in history: white Europeans put in place the systematic oppression of Black women, which simultaneously established stereotypes of these women. Black women are excluded from the standard of virtue because they do not fit under the white patriarchal criteria of womanhood. If women express their anger, they are seen as unmaternal and unattractive to others. Black women are seen as rude and loud once they speak their opinions. The media, including films, as well as other publications, perpetuate these stereotypes, which influence many people's perceptions of Black women in contemporary times. Additionally these very same sources influence the way in which Black women internalize perceptions of themselves, leading them to suppress their anger in ways that could negatively impact them in the long run.
\nIn this annotated bibliography, one of the themes that is most prevalent is how problematic these stereotypes are to black women, especially in a psychological and emotional sense. Black women often internalize these stereotypes and try to express or suppress their anger in different ways. Some of the articles in this bibliography demonstrate that Black women have a lot to be angry about and should not be apologetic for articulating their frustrations. For psychotherapy, therapists must be aware of the cultural factors and stereotypes that are imposed on black women in order to give them the correct treatment and help black women work through these stereotypes. Yes, black women have universal struggles; however, it is problematic that the \"angry black woman\" stereotype is applied to not only a couple of black women but to all black women, in many different contexts, not limited to literature, but also to television and film.
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\nNOTE FROM PROFESSOR HALL: The final version of this 2014 bibliography had nine sources, which I somehow can't locate.
\nThis collection hopes to provide an introduction to the field of Afrofuturism, and its relevance and insight to culture and Critical Race Theory. Harkening back from jazz artists like Sun Ra and theorists like DuBois to the present preoccupation with R&B artist Janelle Monae, Afrofuturism has become a way to “place traditions that didn’t quite fit” within the black historical narrative, as Professor Alondra Nelson has said. The movement is vast and varied, and focuses not only on the well known artistic re-imagining of blackness in the future, but also on the practical belief in the need to use the future and the technological to survive in the black reality. Furthermore, Afrofuturism complicates the post-modernist and post-race utopian narrative present in most sci-fi works, expanding the idea of the self with ideas of intersectional identities. Most importantly, though, Afrofuturism deals with striking a balance between working toward a progressive future while still remembering our past and its relevance, envisioning a way out of the constraints of blackness, while simultaneously remembering an essence.
\nThe journal articles presented by Kodwo Eshun and Alondra Nelson are central foundational texts to the critical theory of Afrofuturism, written not too much later than when the term was coined. They situate the future as not only a tangible reality, but also a commodity and structure of power that black people have been alienated from. Furthermore, they critique the idea of post-modernism as a “new” shift of identity because of modernism, mentioning theorists like Dubois and even the Atlantic slave trade experience, as an example of an alienating black experience.
\nThe books by Womack, Lock, and Flanagan and Booth, are more varied with their subject matter however. I advise that readers look at Ytasha Womack’s book on Afrofuturism first, as it involves an introduction on terms and ideas of Afrofuturism. Lock’s book focuses on Sun Ra’s influence on Afrofuturism, and Flanagan and Booth’s book discusses post-modernism in terms of the black woman afrofuturist and the intersectional identities she occupies. Lastly, the two videos and web page bring Afrofuturism to the present day, and how we engage with this theory in our daily lives. Janelle Monae’s video shows Afrofuturist aesthetics in the mainstream, and Molina Speaks TEDx Talk discusses Hip-Hops relationship with afrofuturism. Lastly the Shadows Took Shape Tumblr is an online source linked to the Studio Museum of Harlem that can provide a steady influx of new information about Afrofuturism.
\nThe limitation of this collection is it’s lack of comprehensiveness in all aspects of Afrofuturism, but the hope is to spark the interest to research further. Much of the innovation within this field of study is still online and on particular blogs, which is important when thinking of Afrofuturisms relationship with technology. In conclusion, Afrofuturism is a rearticulation and re-imagining of blackness in the future, both practically and fantastically. Critical Race Theory would benefit from learning about such a mindset.
\nAlondra Nelson’s Afrofuturism looks at the way different cultures interact and produce technology and pushes back against the white Western technoculture that often imagines a raceless, genderless future. The authors included in this text address the intersection between African diasporic culture and techonolgy through literature, music, speculative fiction, poetry, visual art, and the internet. Presenting a direct contestation of modern white technoculture, this collection of articles maintain that racial identity fundamentally influences technocultural practices. The section titled “The Revolution Will Be Digitized” by Anna Everett particularly provides an account of the African diasporic consciousness and the disappearance of both physical and imaginary borders in cyberspace with the rise of the Internet. She provides a detailed history of how blacks and women refused to be deterred from their demands for unrestricted access to the public portals to power.
\nThis relates to all the other sources included in the bibliography, including modern examples of black female communities formed through blogging and interacting over the Internet. This space to share knowledge, experience, and art in an uncensored way leads to the realization of the black females true self. The inclusion of black women in the “cult of information” allows them to enjoy and explore different facets of their identity without being confined to one category or sphere of blackness/womanhood. Black women have not only carved out a distinct niche in cyperspace but they have made un-ignorable changes to the way people interact and engage with technology through their pushing of artistic and intellectual boundaries.
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Afrofuturism and hip-hop have an interwoven history of using speculative fiction and fantasy to imagine a future where people of color can live their lives with the freedom to participate and advance in the modern technological world. The black imagination and its cultural and technological production has historically been deemed lesser or simply ignored by mainstream academies of thought. One of the greatest consequences of the illegibility of black art has been generations of young black girls who navigate their teenage years with a severe lack of artistic and cultural content they can relate to. Because fantasy often leads to reality, the limitations put on the young black female imagination intentionally keeps them from flourishing into their full potential and creating new horizons for themselves in the same way their white contemporaries have been able to. This collection of sources all contribute to a discussion of the way Afrofuturism provides a framework to achieving more discursive, authentic representations of black girlhood and how hip-hop has been the soundtrack to many young girls’ experiences in navigating their future in the digital age. Hip-hop, art, and the Internet work intersectionally to shatter the boundaries black girls face and give them valuable tools for fulfilling their individual potential as well as developing online communities where they can find solidarity and create a stronger black female consciousness.
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\nThe external component that influences Xuela’s homeplace, which is the love that she created for herself challenges the notion of the physical homeplace as the primary source of generating love for self-love and self-determination. Xuela’s source of her love was from within, as she proclaim the formation of her “love in defiance”. In opposition to hooks’ experience of a loving homeplace that was foundational in establishing love she has for herself and other black women, it was the absence of love and kindness in Xuela’s homeplace that inspired her to curate the love she contained. Though the site of the homeplace was different, the outcome was similar in that they both generated love from deep within themselves, in response to an oppressive external force, as hooks declares in a Homeplace: A Site of Resistance:
\n“This task of making homeplace was not simply a matter of black women providing service; it was about the construction of a safe place where black people could affirm one another and by doing so heal many wounds inflicted by racist domination. We could not learn to love or respect ourselves in the culture of white supremacy, on the outside; it was there on the inside, in that “homeplace”, most often created and kept by black women, that we had the opportunity to grow and develop, to nurture our spirits. This task of making a homeplace, of making a home a community of resistance, has been shared by black women globally, especially black women in the white supremacy societies.” (42)
\nThe homeplace, regardless of its origin produces, allows the black girl to mobilize love for herself into her black womanhood. A love that is rooted in the ability to self- invent and self-determine in the presence of the overwhelming white supremacy.
\n\n
\n
\n
\n
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\n
In Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde explores the psychology of the black girl, through her upbringing from her West Indian Parents, the relationship she had with her older sisters, her friendships and the longing she had for friend. The relationships that she had with the black girls and women in her life reveal the issues of mental health, politics of respectability, resistance, sexuality, movement, queerness and the black girl’s desire and ability to self-invent. Lorde’s conversations about mental health, wellness and the isolation as a black girl lay out the relevance of the care that should be invested in the sustenance of the black girl’s psychology as it is carried out into womanhood, as Lorde’s shares :“Even though I had two older sisters, I grew up feeling like an only child, since they were quite close to each other in age, and quite far away from me. Actually, I grew up feeling like an only planet, or some isolated world in a hostile or at best, unfriendly firmament. The fact that I was clothed, sheltered, and fed better than many other children in Harlem in those Depression years was not a fact that impressed itself too often my child’s consciousness.” (34) The issues of age, class, race and geographic location factors into the memory and re-memories of the black girl and black woman. Similarly to hooks’ argument about the role of memory, its representations, its impacts, its interpretations and relevance in development and growth, Lorde provides us with the opportunity to analyze and witness the internal conflicts that the black girl in response to her environs.
\nHolistic care and nurture of the black girl child
\n\n
“We did not weep for the thing that was once a child
\ndid not weep for the thing that had been a child
\ndid not weep for the thing that had been
\nnor for the deep dark silences
\nthat ate of the so-young flesh.
\nBut we wept at the sight of the two men standing alone
\nflat in the sky, alone
\nshoveling earth as a blanket
\nto keep the young blood dow.
\nFor we saw ourselves in the dark room mother- blanket
\nSaw ourselves deep in the earth’s breast-swelling-
\nNo longer young
\nAnd knew ourselves for the first time
\ndead and alone.
\nWe did not weep for the thing-weep for the thing-
\nWe did not weep for the thing that was
\nOnce a child
\nMay 22, 1949”(97)
\nLorde shares with us the admiration she has for her mother as well as the pain she endured from the relationship between her mother and herself. Lorde’s mother strictness and strong hold on Audre and her siblings is associated with their complicated identities as black, immigrant, poor family living in Harlem during a depression. When Lorde mentions, “I am a reflection of my mother’s secret as well as her hidden angers” (33) there is a bond her mother’s black womanhood and the fears she has for Lorde’s development as a black girl in America. The embodiment of Lorde’s will, brilliance, desire and innocence as a child encompassed her ability to expand beyond the prescribed notions of her black girlhood. This translated into Lorde’s mother’s fear and anger of the racial organization of America that hinders and harms herself as well as her child.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2016-02-03T19:55:38Z", "dateModified": "2016-02-04T18:37:02Z" } }, { "key": "BG6WWWHH", "version": 1792, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 396991, "name": "BWA2015", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/bwa2015", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/396991/items/BG6WWWHH", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/bwa2015/items/BG6WWWHH", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/396991/items/HPGT5HCC", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 1638943, "username": "dania1995", "name": "", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dania1995", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "BG6WWWHH", "version": 1792, "parentItem": "HPGT5HCC", "itemType": "note", "note": "Ruth Nicole Brown mentions the term “Emancipatory Black Girlhood” in Hearing Our Truths. Emancipatory Black Girlhood explores and gives credence to the complexity and the multiplicity of Black Girlhood. Emancipatory Black Girlhood is both an individualistic as well as collective as it encourages the Black to question herself within the context the collective and thus giving the girl the opportunity to invent herself. Additionally, Brown mentions that Emancipatory Black Girlhood is intertwined with the notion that focuses on Black girlhood is imperative because it is a fundamental and formative period of the Black girl’s and the Black women’s identify. Brown encourages the idea that Black girlhood is a very active and persistent phase in Black girlhood and womanhood. The Emancipatory Black Girlhood represents the outcome when black girls are in environments, the homeplace, that is supportive of and promotes love and self-determination.
\nIn chapter two, “ Black Women Remember Black Girls: A Collective and Creative Memory” Brown highlights the importance of memory in preserving and creating memory. The collective effort of creating memories that supports the sustenance and perseverance of Black girlhood, organization and documentation is necessary. There is a formality as well as an informality in organizing and documenting elements of the homeplace that produces the multiplicity of black girlhood.The processes of documenting the elements of the homeplace honors ancestral work. Re-memories can be used as guidelines for Black womanhood as Brown mentions:
\n“The vision: Black girlhood is freedom, and Black girls are free. As an organizing construct, Black girlhood makes possible the affirmation of Black girls’ live and, if necessary, their liberation. Black girlhood as a spatial intervention is useful for making our daily lives better and therefore changing the world, as we currently know it. Love guides our actions and permeates our beings. For those who do not know love, we create spaces to practice Black girlhood and sense love, to name it, claim it, and share it.” (1)
\nThe magnitude of Black girlhood is boundless. When the black girl’s personhood is recognized outside of realm of the homeplace, though her personhood is not dependent on external recognition, her personhood moves from the unvisibility to visibility in the framework of the law. Brown elaborates on the role of black girl scholarship plays in “This book continues to theorize Black girlhood through representations, memories, and lived experiences of being and becoming in a body marked as youthful, Black and female, while also playing with experimental interpretive methods. However, because Black girlhood rests sometimes so easily on the slippery slope of identity politics that now fashionably conjures liberal rhetoric if” (8) Through SOLHOT- which is an organization founded by Brown is dedicated to the nurturing, the scholarship, the development and the love of black girlhood. In addition to acknowledge the importance of black girl, Brown highlights the importance documenting the memories that shape black girlhood and womanhood. As stated in The Homegirl’s Poem Prayer:
\n“It’s for us, too-
\nhow it impacted me.
\n…I’m passionate about it
\nand see(ing) the urgency in it.
\nIt’s really why I am in…
\nSubconsciously.
\nI tell my mom and my grandmother
\nit’s one of the best places I’ve ever been…
\nMy grandmother’s,
\nA theorist,
\nToo.
\nShe’s a magician.
\nShe does awesome things.
\nAnd so
\nI
\nBelieve(d)
\nIn that.
\nSOLHOT will always live on in that way. “(57)
\n\n
Similarly to Ntozake Shange’s argument about honoring our ancestors and ourselves, Brown strongly encourages documenting the histories, in Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo Ntozake Shange uses spells as forms recollection of memories. In doing so, she records the experiences, the love and the traumas of the black girlhood. As Shange writes “Mr. Lucas stood in the back of his pharmacy, looking at his S.C Certification, his diploma from Atlanta University. He knew he might be in some trouble. Didn’t know what had got hold to him. Every once in a while, he saw a woman with something he wanted. Something she shouldn’t have. He didn’t know what it was, an irrelevance, an insolence, an insolence, like the bitch thought she owned the moon.” (25) Followed by this, Shange includes a spell titled To Rid Oneself of the Scent of Evil. The exchange between Mr. Lucas and Indigo was halted due to the voice-her ancestors, the spirits, that prevented Mr. Lucas from robbing Indigo from her girlhood. The spell that Shange provides us with is a method of remembering lived experiences and a tool to heal, much like Brown’s encouragement to practice black girlhood with the rituals that are embedded in SOLHOT, Shange allots practices to heal. As mentioned in the spell, “Though it may cause some emotional disruptions, stand absolutely still & repeat the offender’s name till you are overwhelmed with the memory of your encounter. Take two slow deep breaths, on a 7 count.” (25) The repetitiveness of practicing black girlhood enables black girls to be girls, to be cognizant of their childhood and to have their existence, their being and their needs taken seriously, as people with agency.
\n\n
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In Sugar in the Raw, Carroll’s decision to interview multiple black girls is imperative as it articulates the infiniteness of the black girl’s identity. Though each experience is tailored specifically to the girls’ environment, their familial structures and their socioeconomic backgrounds, their identities as black girls in America is the most prevalent as it influences their interpretation of their bodies, their hair, their speech and their abilities in microscopic ways. Each interview reveals the importance of representation, whether it was role models in the genre of dance, acting, writing or academia. By doing this Carroll encourages a movement beyond prescribed notions of the black girl’s existence. In the foreword, written by Ntozake Shange mentions some of her motivations for contributing to Carroll’s work, “As I read and read again Rebecca Carroll’s Sugar in the Raw, I eagerly recounted sense memories of my teen years. Yet, I must honestly admit, sometimes I forced myself to relive with these young black women moments that continue to sicken me, inhibit and constrain my spirit.” (9) The connection between black girlhood and black womanhood is continuous because the experience that shapes the black girl’s understandings influences the memory and the being of the black woman.
\nThe story of fourteen years old Jo-Laine from Brooklyn shows that the black girl child is burden with the beauty of standard that does not align with who she is and will every be. However, her understanding of the importance of internal beauty is inspiring and reflective of the hard work that black girls have to do at a tender age as she shares:
\n“Those same girls who boast about being light-skinned feel that they are prettier than me, like they have an advantage over me. But I truly feel it doesn’t matter what your complexion is. I don’t let simple things like that get to me, but I do think about it. I mean, black is just a color. What matters is what’s inside. Because you can have a lot of good inside you, but if you don’t feel good about it, then it is lost.” (36)
\nJo-Laine’s insightfulness brings into the conversation the burdens and the responsibilities that the black girl child is responsible for. For example, being responsible for deciding to be beautiful against all odds instead of being beautiful. She has to intentionally think about it instead on focusing other parts of herself. In addition to that, being responsible to teach about aspects of her identities that have been denied or reduced in her daily efforts of being a person. Her confession proves that the black girl’s psychology affects self-perception and representation.
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