Ruth Nicole Brown
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037979
- eISBN:
- 9780252095245
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037979.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this ...
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This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this creativity informs other realizations about Black girlhood and womanhood. Founded in 2006 and co-organized by the author, SOLHOT is an intergenerational collective organizing effort that celebrates and recognizes Black girls as producers of culture and knowledge. Girls discuss diverse expressions of Black girlhood, critique the issues that are important to them, and create art that keeps their lived experiences at its center. Drawing from experiences in SOLHOT, the book argues that when Black girls reflect on their own lives, they articulate radically unique ideas about their lived experiences. The book documents the creative potential of Black girls and women who are working together to advance original theories, practices, and performances that affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls' lives. In doing so, this book expands on the work of Black feminists and feminists of color and breaks intriguing new ground in Black feminist thought and methodology. Emotionally and intellectually powerful, the book combines theory with creativity to show how the creative helps to theorize, and how theory can be enacted through creativity.Less
This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this creativity informs other realizations about Black girlhood and womanhood. Founded in 2006 and co-organized by the author, SOLHOT is an intergenerational collective organizing effort that celebrates and recognizes Black girls as producers of culture and knowledge. Girls discuss diverse expressions of Black girlhood, critique the issues that are important to them, and create art that keeps their lived experiences at its center. Drawing from experiences in SOLHOT, the book argues that when Black girls reflect on their own lives, they articulate radically unique ideas about their lived experiences. The book documents the creative potential of Black girls and women who are working together to advance original theories, practices, and performances that affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls' lives. In doing so, this book expands on the work of Black feminists and feminists of color and breaks intriguing new ground in Black feminist thought and methodology. Emotionally and intellectually powerful, the book combines theory with creativity to show how the creative helps to theorize, and how theory can be enacted through creativity.
Ula Yvette Taylor
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469633930
- eISBN:
- 9781469633954
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469633930.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
The patriarchal structure of the Nation of Islam (NOI) promised black women the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization’s men, who were fiercely committed to these ...
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The patriarchal structure of the Nation of Islam (NOI) promised black women the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization’s men, who were fiercely committed to these masculine roles. Black women’s experience in the NOI, however, has largely remained on the periphery of scholarship. This book documents their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. The author shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments. Telling the stories of women like Clara Poole (wife of Elijah Muhammad) and Burnsteen Sharrieff (secretary to W. D. Fard, founder of the Allah Temple of Islam), the author offers a compelling narrative that explains how their decision to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America.Less
The patriarchal structure of the Nation of Islam (NOI) promised black women the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization’s men, who were fiercely committed to these masculine roles. Black women’s experience in the NOI, however, has largely remained on the periphery of scholarship. This book documents their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. The author shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments. Telling the stories of women like Clara Poole (wife of Elijah Muhammad) and Burnsteen Sharrieff (secretary to W. D. Fard, founder of the Allah Temple of Islam), the author offers a compelling narrative that explains how their decision to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America.
Susan V. Donaldson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496814531
- eISBN:
- 9781496814579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496814531.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This essay focuses on introducing students in an American Studies intensive writing freshman seminar on southern women writers to the cultural context of Eudora Welty’s first volume A Curtain of ...
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This essay focuses on introducing students in an American Studies intensive writing freshman seminar on southern women writers to the cultural context of Eudora Welty’s first volume A Curtain of Green (1942) and its recurring motifs of confinement and rebellion. The course begins with a showing of the film Gone with the Wind and Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to introduce students to the cultural mythology of southern womanhood and its lasting impact upon American culture, from stereotypes of black and white womanhood reified in American culture by Hollywood to revisions and parodies produced by writers ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Randall and Eudora Welty herself. Hence the course situates Welty’s short stories within a tradition of southern black and white women writers critical of the region’s mythology of womanhood, the color line, and segregation’s hypervisual culture of surveillance.Less
This essay focuses on introducing students in an American Studies intensive writing freshman seminar on southern women writers to the cultural context of Eudora Welty’s first volume A Curtain of Green (1942) and its recurring motifs of confinement and rebellion. The course begins with a showing of the film Gone with the Wind and Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to introduce students to the cultural mythology of southern womanhood and its lasting impact upon American culture, from stereotypes of black and white womanhood reified in American culture by Hollywood to revisions and parodies produced by writers ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Randall and Eudora Welty herself. Hence the course situates Welty’s short stories within a tradition of southern black and white women writers critical of the region’s mythology of womanhood, the color line, and segregation’s hypervisual culture of surveillance.
Cheryl A. Wall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646909
- eISBN:
- 9781469646923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646909.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter charts the relationship between two prolific African American essayists, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Unlike Ellison and Baldwin, who were contemporaries but not allies, Jordan and ...
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This chapter charts the relationship between two prolific African American essayists, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Unlike Ellison and Baldwin, who were contemporaries but not allies, Jordan and Walker corresponded with one another, lectured together, and commented on each other’s works. It is argued that Walker and Jordan’s essays record their lifelong quest for redemptive art and politics. This project is marked by a desire for a freer, more hopeful future that comes to terms with a painful, oppressive past. As both essayists came to political consciousness during the civil rights movement, they utilized the rhetoric of rights to redefine ideas of national belonging. In doing so, they expanded the scope of the essay to includeissues of gender and sexuality. Through analyzing their essays, this chapter illustrates how Jordan and Walker in distinct, yet complementary ways, shape the art of the essay.Less
This chapter charts the relationship between two prolific African American essayists, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Unlike Ellison and Baldwin, who were contemporaries but not allies, Jordan and Walker corresponded with one another, lectured together, and commented on each other’s works. It is argued that Walker and Jordan’s essays record their lifelong quest for redemptive art and politics. This project is marked by a desire for a freer, more hopeful future that comes to terms with a painful, oppressive past. As both essayists came to political consciousness during the civil rights movement, they utilized the rhetoric of rights to redefine ideas of national belonging. In doing so, they expanded the scope of the essay to includeissues of gender and sexuality. Through analyzing their essays, this chapter illustrates how Jordan and Walker in distinct, yet complementary ways, shape the art of the essay.
