Benita Roth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496813657
- eISBN:
- 9781496813695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496813657.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter analyzes black feminist thought that grew out of civil rights-era activism. It highlights that while there is a broad scholarly understanding of black feminism, black feminists have ...
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This chapter analyzes black feminist thought that grew out of civil rights-era activism. It highlights that while there is a broad scholarly understanding of black feminism, black feminists have often been hidden from public view. However, black women and black feminists have done much to alter what it means to be black and female in the United States. The chapter also specifically notes the origins of intersectionality in black feminist scholarship and the role that intersectionality continues to play in feminist discourses. It underlines not only the diversity of African American women's lived experiences—what it means to be simultaneously a racially minoritized individual but also a woman—but also the multiplicity of oppressions that black women experience, from racism to sexism and beyond.Less
This chapter analyzes black feminist thought that grew out of civil rights-era activism. It highlights that while there is a broad scholarly understanding of black feminism, black feminists have often been hidden from public view. However, black women and black feminists have done much to alter what it means to be black and female in the United States. The chapter also specifically notes the origins of intersectionality in black feminist scholarship and the role that intersectionality continues to play in feminist discourses. It underlines not only the diversity of African American women's lived experiences—what it means to be simultaneously a racially minoritized individual but also a woman—but also the multiplicity of oppressions that black women experience, from racism to sexism and beyond.
Sherie M. Randolph
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623917
- eISBN:
- 9781469625119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623917.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines Flo Kennedy’s leadership in creating a black feminist movement to challenge the critical linkages between all forms of oppression, especially racism and sexism. By 1972, while ...
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This chapter examines Flo Kennedy’s leadership in creating a black feminist movement to challenge the critical linkages between all forms of oppression, especially racism and sexism. By 1972, while she was excited about the growth of the predominantly white feminist movement, she was also profoundly disappointed that the struggle still did not fully embrace a black feminist position and make challenging racism as well as sexism central to its political agenda. Thus, Kennedy worked to create interracial feminist organizations that emphasized a black feminist praxis. Her activism during this period was central to building a women’s movement that included women of all races as well as an independent black feminist movement. To Kennedy’s thinking, Shirley Chisholm’s quest for the presidential nomination was the perfect opportunity for white feminists to build an alliance and support a black feminist politics. In 1971 she created the Feminist Party in hopes of bringing together an inclusive group of feminists to support not simply the candidacy of the black congresswoman but black feminism more generally. Equally interested in advancing black feminist praxis, she worked to create the National Black Feminist Organization in 1973 and pushed black women to form their own autonomous black feminist movement.Less
This chapter examines Flo Kennedy’s leadership in creating a black feminist movement to challenge the critical linkages between all forms of oppression, especially racism and sexism. By 1972, while she was excited about the growth of the predominantly white feminist movement, she was also profoundly disappointed that the struggle still did not fully embrace a black feminist position and make challenging racism as well as sexism central to its political agenda. Thus, Kennedy worked to create interracial feminist organizations that emphasized a black feminist praxis. Her activism during this period was central to building a women’s movement that included women of all races as well as an independent black feminist movement. To Kennedy’s thinking, Shirley Chisholm’s quest for the presidential nomination was the perfect opportunity for white feminists to build an alliance and support a black feminist politics. In 1971 she created the Feminist Party in hopes of bringing together an inclusive group of feminists to support not simply the candidacy of the black congresswoman but black feminism more generally. Equally interested in advancing black feminist praxis, she worked to create the National Black Feminist Organization in 1973 and pushed black women to form their own autonomous black feminist movement.
Grace Kyungwon Hong
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695263
- eISBN:
- 9781452952352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695263.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter meditates on how such a theory of queer reproduction might help one engage with the material and epistemological violences of the university, particularly as they manifest around the ...
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This chapter meditates on how such a theory of queer reproduction might help one engage with the material and epistemological violences of the university, particularly as they manifest around the exclusion and extermination of Black feminist lives alongside the institutionalization of Black feminism. Following the lead of Barbara Christian, this chapter asks, what happens when academic generationality is interrupted by both cutting off of future generations of Black feminists through the abolishment of affirmative action and the premature death of Black feminists in the academy? This chapter examines the university itself as a biopolitical institution, and finds in Black feminism a vision for a different relationship of knowledge, futurity, and the politicalLess
This chapter meditates on how such a theory of queer reproduction might help one engage with the material and epistemological violences of the university, particularly as they manifest around the exclusion and extermination of Black feminist lives alongside the institutionalization of Black feminism. Following the lead of Barbara Christian, this chapter asks, what happens when academic generationality is interrupted by both cutting off of future generations of Black feminists through the abolishment of affirmative action and the premature death of Black feminists in the academy? This chapter examines the university itself as a biopolitical institution, and finds in Black feminism a vision for a different relationship of knowledge, futurity, and the political
Cheryl Higashida
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036507
- eISBN:
- 9780252093548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036507.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This introductory chapter describes Black internationalist feminism. Black internationalist feminism challenged heteronormative and masculinist articulations of nationalism while maintaining the ...
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This introductory chapter describes Black internationalist feminism. Black internationalist feminism challenged heteronormative and masculinist articulations of nationalism while maintaining the importance, even centrality, of national liberation movements for achieving Black women's social, political, and economic rights. As a corollary of the Communist Party's Black Belt Nation Thesis—which prioritized African American struggles for equality, justice, and self-determination—women of the Black Left asserted that Black women had special problems that could not be deferred or subsumed within the rubrics of working-class or Black oppression and that in fact were integral to the universal struggle for human rights and economic freedom. Moreover, women of the Black Left understood that essential to the liberation of African Americans, the Third World, and the worldwide proletariat was the fight against heteropatriarchy, which exacerbated oppression within as well as between nations.Less
This introductory chapter describes Black internationalist feminism. Black internationalist feminism challenged heteronormative and masculinist articulations of nationalism while maintaining the importance, even centrality, of national liberation movements for achieving Black women's social, political, and economic rights. As a corollary of the Communist Party's Black Belt Nation Thesis—which prioritized African American struggles for equality, justice, and self-determination—women of the Black Left asserted that Black women had special problems that could not be deferred or subsumed within the rubrics of working-class or Black oppression and that in fact were integral to the universal struggle for human rights and economic freedom. Moreover, women of the Black Left understood that essential to the liberation of African Americans, the Third World, and the worldwide proletariat was the fight against heteropatriarchy, which exacerbated oppression within as well as between nations.
Kate Dossett
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813031408
- eISBN:
- 9780813039282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813031408.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on the works of Amy Jacques Garvey and Jessie Fauset, women writers and activists of the New Negro movement in Harlem during the 1920s. This chapter provides an account of how ...
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This chapter focuses on the works of Amy Jacques Garvey and Jessie Fauset, women writers and activists of the New Negro movement in Harlem during the 1920s. This chapter provides an account of how these women's intellectual and practical endeavor contributed to internationalist black feminism. The chapter evaluates the position of these women in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Chapter 4 begins with an evaluation of how Amy Jacques Garvey carved a niche for herself within the movement including the manner with which she used her leadership role in the UNIA and her literary contribution in the Negro World in shaping black nationalism feminism. The chapter also discusses the works and contributions of Jessie Fauset in helping to shape feminist thought through her essays and novels. The chapter also discusses the fight of the black women to secure leadership roles in shaping a stand on racism and black nationalism wherein black women defined their roles in political and cultural issues wherein in the earlier times they were dominated by men who defined and diminish women within the domestic sphere.Less
This chapter focuses on the works of Amy Jacques Garvey and Jessie Fauset, women writers and activists of the New Negro movement in Harlem during the 1920s. This chapter provides an account of how these women's intellectual and practical endeavor contributed to internationalist black feminism. The chapter evaluates the position of these women in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Chapter 4 begins with an evaluation of how Amy Jacques Garvey carved a niche for herself within the movement including the manner with which she used her leadership role in the UNIA and her literary contribution in the Negro World in shaping black nationalism feminism. The chapter also discusses the works and contributions of Jessie Fauset in helping to shape feminist thought through her essays and novels. The chapter also discusses the fight of the black women to secure leadership roles in shaping a stand on racism and black nationalism wherein black women defined their roles in political and cultural issues wherein in the earlier times they were dominated by men who defined and diminish women within the domestic sphere.
Carol Giardina
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813034560
- eISBN:
- 9780813039329
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034560.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter focuses on the strong influence of Black Power on the growth of women's liberation. “Black Power” refers to the winning of sufficient political power by poor black people. The chapter ...
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This chapter focuses on the strong influence of Black Power on the growth of women's liberation. “Black Power” refers to the winning of sufficient political power by poor black people. The chapter outlines the effect of Black Power on the liberation of black feminism. The chapter also tells about a different type of male chauvinism in the form of the black nationalist Left. The chapter states Black Power to be the basis for challenging male chauvinism. As stated in this chapter black feminism appears to have been produced by Black Power. Black Power also provided black women with training for organizing the Women's Liberation Movement. The chapter also discusses the effect of Black Power on white feminists.Less
This chapter focuses on the strong influence of Black Power on the growth of women's liberation. “Black Power” refers to the winning of sufficient political power by poor black people. The chapter outlines the effect of Black Power on the liberation of black feminism. The chapter also tells about a different type of male chauvinism in the form of the black nationalist Left. The chapter states Black Power to be the basis for challenging male chauvinism. As stated in this chapter black feminism appears to have been produced by Black Power. Black Power also provided black women with training for organizing the Women's Liberation Movement. The chapter also discusses the effect of Black Power on white feminists.
Sherie M. Randolph
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623917
- eISBN:
- 9781469625119
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623917.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This book examines the activism and theories of the black feminist lawyer Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916–2000) by focusing specifically on her influence on the Black Power and feminist movements. ...
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This book examines the activism and theories of the black feminist lawyer Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916–2000) by focusing specifically on her influence on the Black Power and feminist movements. Rather than simply reacting to the predominantly white feminist movement, Kennedy brought the lessons of Black Power to white feminism and built bridges in the struggles against racism and sexism. This book narrates Kennedy’s progressive upbringing, her path breaking graduation from Columbia Law School, and her long career as a media-savvy activist, showing how Kennedy rose to founding roles in organizations such as the National Black Feminist Organization and the National Organization for Women, allying herself with both white and black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, H. Rap Brown, William Kunstler, Betty Friedan, and Shirley Chisholm. Making use of an extensive and previously uncollected archive, Randolph demonstrates profound connections within the histories of the new left, civil rights, Black Power, and feminism, showing that black feminism was pivotal in shaping postwar U.S. liberation movements.Less
This book examines the activism and theories of the black feminist lawyer Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916–2000) by focusing specifically on her influence on the Black Power and feminist movements. Rather than simply reacting to the predominantly white feminist movement, Kennedy brought the lessons of Black Power to white feminism and built bridges in the struggles against racism and sexism. This book narrates Kennedy’s progressive upbringing, her path breaking graduation from Columbia Law School, and her long career as a media-savvy activist, showing how Kennedy rose to founding roles in organizations such as the National Black Feminist Organization and the National Organization for Women, allying herself with both white and black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, H. Rap Brown, William Kunstler, Betty Friedan, and Shirley Chisholm. Making use of an extensive and previously uncollected archive, Randolph demonstrates profound connections within the histories of the new left, civil rights, Black Power, and feminism, showing that black feminism was pivotal in shaping postwar U.S. liberation movements.
Cheryl Higashida
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036507
- eISBN:
- 9780252093548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036507.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter provides a history of Black internationalist feminism. It begins with the intertwinings of Black nationalist and Old Left movements in the interwar years, with special attention to the ...
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This chapter provides a history of Black internationalist feminism. It begins with the intertwinings of Black nationalist and Old Left movements in the interwar years, with special attention to the Black Belt Nation Thesis, which produced political solidarities beyond the limited affiliations engendered and policed by U.S. liberal democracy. While putting the Black Belt Nation Thesis into practice entrenched Left masculinism more fully, several leading Black Communists transformed the meaning of self-determination to allow for intersectional analysis of race and gender and to address the “special oppressed status” of Black women. In doing so, African American Left women in particular paved the way for postwar Black feminism, which Claudia Jones definitively theorized. The chapter then demonstrates how the activism and analysis of African American women on the Old Left such as Maude White Katz and Louise Thompson Patterson laid grounds for postwar Black feminism.Less
This chapter provides a history of Black internationalist feminism. It begins with the intertwinings of Black nationalist and Old Left movements in the interwar years, with special attention to the Black Belt Nation Thesis, which produced political solidarities beyond the limited affiliations engendered and policed by U.S. liberal democracy. While putting the Black Belt Nation Thesis into practice entrenched Left masculinism more fully, several leading Black Communists transformed the meaning of self-determination to allow for intersectional analysis of race and gender and to address the “special oppressed status” of Black women. In doing so, African American Left women in particular paved the way for postwar Black feminism, which Claudia Jones definitively theorized. The chapter then demonstrates how the activism and analysis of African American women on the Old Left such as Maude White Katz and Louise Thompson Patterson laid grounds for postwar Black feminism.
Sherie M. Randolph
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469623917
- eISBN:
- 9781469625119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623917.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter gives an overview of the central arguments in Florynce “Flo” Kennedy as well as a brief synopsis of the chapters. Randolph demonstrates the central role of black feminists in post–World ...
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This chapter gives an overview of the central arguments in Florynce “Flo” Kennedy as well as a brief synopsis of the chapters. Randolph demonstrates the central role of black feminists in post–World War II social and political movements. Many scholars, students, and people concerned with political issues assume black women did not engage in postwar feminist actions until after the development of the predominantly white second wave women’s movement. While scholars have begun challenging this historical inaccuracy, most works on postwar feminist radicalism still view black feminism as emerging largely in protest against exclusion by white feminists or in opposition to Black Power. This book demonstrates that black women were present at the creation of postwar feminist movements and articulated a black feminist agenda based on their position as African American women who experienced sexist and racist discrimination in forms that could not be pulled apart and fought separately.Less
This chapter gives an overview of the central arguments in Florynce “Flo” Kennedy as well as a brief synopsis of the chapters. Randolph demonstrates the central role of black feminists in post–World War II social and political movements. Many scholars, students, and people concerned with political issues assume black women did not engage in postwar feminist actions until after the development of the predominantly white second wave women’s movement. While scholars have begun challenging this historical inaccuracy, most works on postwar feminist radicalism still view black feminism as emerging largely in protest against exclusion by white feminists or in opposition to Black Power. This book demonstrates that black women were present at the creation of postwar feminist movements and articulated a black feminist agenda based on their position as African American women who experienced sexist and racist discrimination in forms that could not be pulled apart and fought separately.
Monica Michlin and Jean-Paul Rocchi (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319389
- eISBN:
- 9781781380901
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319389.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Black Intersectionalities goes beyond conventional identity studies to offer a critique of identity categories themselves. Markers of identity are too often assigned, examined, and theorized as ...
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Black Intersectionalities goes beyond conventional identity studies to offer a critique of identity categories themselves. Markers of identity are too often assigned, examined, and theorized as definitive binaries that fail to take into account the dynamism of individuality and its relationship to the social whole, relegating people to either male or female, straight or gay, black or white, and so on. Focusing on the way identity is both constructed and constructive, the authors in this collection progress beyond prescribed categories, seeking to develop new types of interdisciplinary frameworks in which subjective and political spaces can at once be universalized and kept particular. In doing so they offer a truer concept of identity – as imagined, plural, and continuously shifting.Less
Black Intersectionalities goes beyond conventional identity studies to offer a critique of identity categories themselves. Markers of identity are too often assigned, examined, and theorized as definitive binaries that fail to take into account the dynamism of individuality and its relationship to the social whole, relegating people to either male or female, straight or gay, black or white, and so on. Focusing on the way identity is both constructed and constructive, the authors in this collection progress beyond prescribed categories, seeking to develop new types of interdisciplinary frameworks in which subjective and political spaces can at once be universalized and kept particular. In doing so they offer a truer concept of identity – as imagined, plural, and continuously shifting.
Simone C. Drake
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226363837
- eISBN:
- 9780226364025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226364025.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
The Introduction lays out the goals of the project, elevating the importance of imagination in any efforts to resist stereotyped and homogeneous constructions of black masculinity. The author ...
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The Introduction lays out the goals of the project, elevating the importance of imagination in any efforts to resist stereotyped and homogeneous constructions of black masculinity. The author explains that the narratives she weaves of black men working to define themselves as thinking, feeling, human subjects are told against a backdrop of crisis. In setting up the relationship between grace and crisis in black men’s lives, the author, through several anecdotes, situates herself as a black woman scholar who frames her research on black masculinities through a black feminist lens. From her experiences raising three black sons to lessons learned from her maternal grandfather and father to pedagogical epiphanies, the author thinks critically about what are the stakes when rejecting crisis and imagining grace for black men and boys.Less
The Introduction lays out the goals of the project, elevating the importance of imagination in any efforts to resist stereotyped and homogeneous constructions of black masculinity. The author explains that the narratives she weaves of black men working to define themselves as thinking, feeling, human subjects are told against a backdrop of crisis. In setting up the relationship between grace and crisis in black men’s lives, the author, through several anecdotes, situates herself as a black woman scholar who frames her research on black masculinities through a black feminist lens. From her experiences raising three black sons to lessons learned from her maternal grandfather and father to pedagogical epiphanies, the author thinks critically about what are the stakes when rejecting crisis and imagining grace for black men and boys.
Kate Dossett
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813031408
- eISBN:
- 9780813039282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813031408.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines the Africa American women who worked within the assumed interracial Young Women's Christian Association at both the local Colored Branch in New York City and the national ...
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This chapter examines the Africa American women who worked within the assumed interracial Young Women's Christian Association at both the local Colored Branch in New York City and the national Colored Committee levels. This chapter examines how the national YWCA leader and the YWCA workers of one of the most prominent Colored Branches operated within the context of relationships with black women, white women, and the YWCA including their involvement in the World War I relief programs. While working at purportedly interracial organization of the YWCA, black women often pursued policies in line with the thought of racial solidarity and the black leadership of black women. Their experience in segregated organizations such as the YWCA provided grounds for them to develop black feminist ways of thinking. The unending disputes between black women and white women in the early decades of the twentieth century also pushed black women to develop black nationalist feminism and black separatism. The chapter also discusses the impact of the pressure brought about by the proposal of the YMCA on the national level to merge with the YWCA in the 1920s.Less
This chapter examines the Africa American women who worked within the assumed interracial Young Women's Christian Association at both the local Colored Branch in New York City and the national Colored Committee levels. This chapter examines how the national YWCA leader and the YWCA workers of one of the most prominent Colored Branches operated within the context of relationships with black women, white women, and the YWCA including their involvement in the World War I relief programs. While working at purportedly interracial organization of the YWCA, black women often pursued policies in line with the thought of racial solidarity and the black leadership of black women. Their experience in segregated organizations such as the YWCA provided grounds for them to develop black feminist ways of thinking. The unending disputes between black women and white women in the early decades of the twentieth century also pushed black women to develop black nationalist feminism and black separatism. The chapter also discusses the impact of the pressure brought about by the proposal of the YMCA on the national level to merge with the YWCA in the 1920s.
Grace Kyungwon Hong
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695263
- eISBN:
- 9781452952352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695263.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Because reproductive respectability is such an important mode by which political and social legibility and value becomes sutured to literal physical life, this chapter extends this analysis to ...
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Because reproductive respectability is such an important mode by which political and social legibility and value becomes sutured to literal physical life, this chapter extends this analysis to examine queer possibilities and futurities that might emerge from Black feminism’s theorization of reproduction and the queerness of what Orlando Patterson has called natal alienation. In particular, this chapter interrogates why a slew of texts from the 1980s and 1990s, including Gayl Jones’s novel Corregidora, Isaac Julien’s film Looking for Langston, Inge Blackman’s B.D. Women, and Rodney Evans’s Brother to Brother, look to the blues and jazz aesthetic of improvisation as a way of imagining a connection to foreclosed pasts and futures marked by contingency. Improvisation, which has been theorized as both invention and tradition, is an apt metaphor and method for describing the ways in which Blackness has been constituted through a simultaneously forced and foreclosed relationship to reproductive normativity. In this chapter, improvisation is the example of difference.Less
Because reproductive respectability is such an important mode by which political and social legibility and value becomes sutured to literal physical life, this chapter extends this analysis to examine queer possibilities and futurities that might emerge from Black feminism’s theorization of reproduction and the queerness of what Orlando Patterson has called natal alienation. In particular, this chapter interrogates why a slew of texts from the 1980s and 1990s, including Gayl Jones’s novel Corregidora, Isaac Julien’s film Looking for Langston, Inge Blackman’s B.D. Women, and Rodney Evans’s Brother to Brother, look to the blues and jazz aesthetic of improvisation as a way of imagining a connection to foreclosed pasts and futures marked by contingency. Improvisation, which has been theorized as both invention and tradition, is an apt metaphor and method for describing the ways in which Blackness has been constituted through a simultaneously forced and foreclosed relationship to reproductive normativity. In this chapter, improvisation is the example of difference.
Cheryl Higashida
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036507
- eISBN:
- 9780252093548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036507.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines selections from Maya Angelou's autobiographies, identifying late-twentieth-century legacy of the post-World War II anticolonial Black Left. On one hand, Angelou's ...
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This chapter examines selections from Maya Angelou's autobiographies, identifying late-twentieth-century legacy of the post-World War II anticolonial Black Left. On one hand, Angelou's autobiographies contest the historiographic erasure of African Americans' internationalist identifications in the Bandung era, especially as they were animated by Black women. On the other hand, Angelou contributes to this erasure by emphasizing personal triumph and individual identity formation over sociohistorical narrative. Indeed, Angelou's remarkable popularity and cultural capital come at the expense of the revolutionary politics shared with comrades who have been exiled, persecuted, or otherwise banished from public memory. The chapter then considers how her writings and career provide an avenue for reclaiming Black feminism's postwar internationalist routes.Less
This chapter examines selections from Maya Angelou's autobiographies, identifying late-twentieth-century legacy of the post-World War II anticolonial Black Left. On one hand, Angelou's autobiographies contest the historiographic erasure of African Americans' internationalist identifications in the Bandung era, especially as they were animated by Black women. On the other hand, Angelou contributes to this erasure by emphasizing personal triumph and individual identity formation over sociohistorical narrative. Indeed, Angelou's remarkable popularity and cultural capital come at the expense of the revolutionary politics shared with comrades who have been exiled, persecuted, or otherwise banished from public memory. The chapter then considers how her writings and career provide an avenue for reclaiming Black feminism's postwar internationalist routes.
Rob Waters
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520293847
- eISBN:
- 9780520967205
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520293847.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Thinking black held people together across their differences. This chapter explores how this holding-together worked, looking at how different groups articulated blackness as they spoke in its name, ...
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Thinking black held people together across their differences. This chapter explores how this holding-together worked, looking at how different groups articulated blackness as they spoke in its name, as well as looking at the materiality of black political cultures—how these operated within a wider expressive culture and how they were affectively charged. The chapter uses the case of the Soledad Brothers to study how Britons defined themselves and their politics as black. It shows their negotiation of Black Power’s often stark masculinity and its African American hegemony. It also draws attention to the processes and problems they encountered building up a political blackness premised on solidarity across differences of ethnicity and gender, making a case for the importance of the immersive and intimate dimensions of black political culture for such alliances.Less
Thinking black held people together across their differences. This chapter explores how this holding-together worked, looking at how different groups articulated blackness as they spoke in its name, as well as looking at the materiality of black political cultures—how these operated within a wider expressive culture and how they were affectively charged. The chapter uses the case of the Soledad Brothers to study how Britons defined themselves and their politics as black. It shows their negotiation of Black Power’s often stark masculinity and its African American hegemony. It also draws attention to the processes and problems they encountered building up a political blackness premised on solidarity across differences of ethnicity and gender, making a case for the importance of the immersive and intimate dimensions of black political culture for such alliances.
Cheryl Higashida
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036507
- eISBN:
- 9780252093548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036507.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Lorraine Hansberry's investments in existentialism in order to show that her play about African revolution, Les Blancs (1970), is a culmination of both her Black queer feminism ...
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This chapter examines Lorraine Hansberry's investments in existentialism in order to show that her play about African revolution, Les Blancs (1970), is a culmination of both her Black queer feminism and her internationalism. Hansberry framed Les Blancs as a response to Jean Genet's internationally acclaimed play, The Blacks—an absurdist meditation on power and race in the context of African decolonization; she attacked what she saw as the corrosive effects of The Blacks' existentialist despair and negation of revolutionary praxis. The chapter then argues that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex provided theoretical scaffolding for Hansberry's Black internationalist feminism. As such, Beauvoir helped Hansberry interrogate dominant views of tragic lesbians, critique heteropatriarchal norms, and represent homosexuality as a political choice with implications for revolutionary movements.Less
This chapter examines Lorraine Hansberry's investments in existentialism in order to show that her play about African revolution, Les Blancs (1970), is a culmination of both her Black queer feminism and her internationalism. Hansberry framed Les Blancs as a response to Jean Genet's internationally acclaimed play, The Blacks—an absurdist meditation on power and race in the context of African decolonization; she attacked what she saw as the corrosive effects of The Blacks' existentialist despair and negation of revolutionary praxis. The chapter then argues that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex provided theoretical scaffolding for Hansberry's Black internationalist feminism. As such, Beauvoir helped Hansberry interrogate dominant views of tragic lesbians, critique heteropatriarchal norms, and represent homosexuality as a political choice with implications for revolutionary movements.
Cheryl Higashida
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036507
- eISBN:
- 9780252093548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036507.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter argues that Audre Lorde's essays and poetry from the 1980s develop an overlooked yet significant strand of second-wave Black feminism that reveals continuities with postwar anticolonial ...
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This chapter argues that Audre Lorde's essays and poetry from the 1980s develop an overlooked yet significant strand of second-wave Black feminism that reveals continuities with postwar anticolonial internationalism. Lorde's poetry and prose from the mid-1980s on, after the invasion of Grenada, reveal that independent Black nationhood becomes an important political goal for her, one not yet superseded by “free” mobility or exilic diasporic communities. Moreover, it is in Lorde's post-invasion prose and poetry that she most explicitly and consistently explores a nationalist internationalism, positing that African Americans are morally and politically bound to support Third World and indigenous struggles for national sovereignty and that anticolonial struggles illuminate and impact African Americans' situation in the United States as an oppressed people.Less
This chapter argues that Audre Lorde's essays and poetry from the 1980s develop an overlooked yet significant strand of second-wave Black feminism that reveals continuities with postwar anticolonial internationalism. Lorde's poetry and prose from the mid-1980s on, after the invasion of Grenada, reveal that independent Black nationhood becomes an important political goal for her, one not yet superseded by “free” mobility or exilic diasporic communities. Moreover, it is in Lorde's post-invasion prose and poetry that she most explicitly and consistently explores a nationalist internationalism, positing that African Americans are morally and politically bound to support Third World and indigenous struggles for national sovereignty and that anticolonial struggles illuminate and impact African Americans' situation in the United States as an oppressed people.
Sabine Broeck
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319389
- eISBN:
- 9781781380901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319389.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter recuperates a number of Black feminist texts between the 1970s and the 2000s. It reads the theoretical advances of black feminism’s history in the US as an epistemic rupture of ...
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This chapter recuperates a number of Black feminist texts between the 1970s and the 2000s. It reads the theoretical advances of black feminism’s history in the US as an epistemic rupture of contemporary White Gender Theory. Criticizing white Euro-American gender theory for its ahistorical denial of transatlantic modern enslavement and its role for the production of Western modern societies, it argues that black feminism, speaking against enslavement as a modern practice of making fungible property of black being, as well as against the post-abolition abjection of blackness, offers the most radical critique of (post)Enlightenment notions of subjectivity, freedom and thus also of gender.Less
This chapter recuperates a number of Black feminist texts between the 1970s and the 2000s. It reads the theoretical advances of black feminism’s history in the US as an epistemic rupture of contemporary White Gender Theory. Criticizing white Euro-American gender theory for its ahistorical denial of transatlantic modern enslavement and its role for the production of Western modern societies, it argues that black feminism, speaking against enslavement as a modern practice of making fungible property of black being, as well as against the post-abolition abjection of blackness, offers the most radical critique of (post)Enlightenment notions of subjectivity, freedom and thus also of gender.
Alexis Lothian
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479811748
- eISBN:
- 9781479854585
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479811748.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Part 2 (A Now that Can Breed Futures: Queerness and Pleasure in Black Science Fiction) turns to black diasporic speculative imagining as it has been used to create futures for those rendered ...
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Part 2 (A Now that Can Breed Futures: Queerness and Pleasure in Black Science Fiction) turns to black diasporic speculative imagining as it has been used to create futures for those rendered futureless by global white supremacy. Chapter 3 focuses on how speculative fiction, racialized reproduction, and queer possibility converge to articulate processes that breed futures, and how these connections underlie the emergence in the 2000s of a canon of literary black science fiction. It introduces pleasure as a central term, tracing figurations of a radical future for black female sexuality that emerge from narrative foreclosures in W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1920 “The Comet” and following their trail into the queer speculations of two black feminist vampire novels: Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories (1991) and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (2005). Du Bois’s text highlights the persistence of reproductive Afrofuturisms that have sometimes overlapped with eugenic discourses. Gomez and Butler pick up this thread to demand we think reproductive futures outside the logics of heteronormativity and white supremacy, using the figure of the vampire to envision a decolonial lesbian future and a speculative reconsideration of eugenic science respectively.Less
Part 2 (A Now that Can Breed Futures: Queerness and Pleasure in Black Science Fiction) turns to black diasporic speculative imagining as it has been used to create futures for those rendered futureless by global white supremacy. Chapter 3 focuses on how speculative fiction, racialized reproduction, and queer possibility converge to articulate processes that breed futures, and how these connections underlie the emergence in the 2000s of a canon of literary black science fiction. It introduces pleasure as a central term, tracing figurations of a radical future for black female sexuality that emerge from narrative foreclosures in W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1920 “The Comet” and following their trail into the queer speculations of two black feminist vampire novels: Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories (1991) and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (2005). Du Bois’s text highlights the persistence of reproductive Afrofuturisms that have sometimes overlapped with eugenic discourses. Gomez and Butler pick up this thread to demand we think reproductive futures outside the logics of heteronormativity and white supremacy, using the figure of the vampire to envision a decolonial lesbian future and a speculative reconsideration of eugenic science respectively.
Cheryl Higashida
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036507
- eISBN:
- 9780252093548
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036507.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Rosa Guy's Black feminist and queer engagement with tropes and discourses of twentieth-century radical literature about Haitian Revolution generated by the U.S. occupation of ...
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This chapter examines Rosa Guy's Black feminist and queer engagement with tropes and discourses of twentieth-century radical literature about Haitian Revolution generated by the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1918–1934) and interwar anticolonialism. Although Guy is a little-known figure of the post-World War II Black Left, she cofounded two of its influential institutions: the Harlem Writers Guild and the Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage. Over thirty years after the height of this activism, Guy reflected on the limitations of Black nationalism and its Left articulations in her novel, The Sun, The Sea, a Touch of the Wind (1995). Guy's novel revises Black masculinist messianism, and in representing the ongoing history of American military intervention in the Caribbean, makes critique of U.S. imperialism central to Black feminism.Less
This chapter examines Rosa Guy's Black feminist and queer engagement with tropes and discourses of twentieth-century radical literature about Haitian Revolution generated by the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1918–1934) and interwar anticolonialism. Although Guy is a little-known figure of the post-World War II Black Left, she cofounded two of its influential institutions: the Harlem Writers Guild and the Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage. Over thirty years after the height of this activism, Guy reflected on the limitations of Black nationalism and its Left articulations in her novel, The Sun, The Sea, a Touch of the Wind (1995). Guy's novel revises Black masculinist messianism, and in representing the ongoing history of American military intervention in the Caribbean, makes critique of U.S. imperialism central to Black feminism.
