scholarly journals Black Feminist Theories of Motherhood and Generation: Histories of Black Infant and Child Loss in the United States

Signs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-335
Author(s):  
LaKisha Michelle Simmons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Loss ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Black Infant

scholarly journals Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Sula and A Mercy: Rethinking (M)Othering

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Natália Fontes de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Mother ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Biological Determinants

Motherhood tends to elicit strong feelings in women as well as a passionate rhetoric in our cultural discourse. Daughters have extensively been the focus of studies about mother-daughter bonds. Surprisingly, much less attention has been given to mother figures. By tracing the theme of motherhood in Sula (1973) and A Mercy (2009), I investigate how Toni Morrison rewrites the experiences of black mothers during slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Drawing mainly on feminist and black feminist theories, I explore, through literary analysis, how motherhood assumes various forms in both novels. The comparative analysis of Sula and A Mercy challenges distorted views commonly associated with the black mother and extends notions of mothering beyond biological determinants.

Eugénie Éboué-Tell and Jane Vialle

2019 ◽  
pp. 82-118
Author(s):  
Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Grey Area ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
French Equatorial Africa ◽  
National Borders

Chapter three functions as a bridge between the first two chapters on locating possibilities for liberation in the grey area of Antillean departmentalization, and the next two chapters on African women’s demands for independence. It examines the ways in which Eugénie Éboué-Tell’s and Jane Vialle’s work in the French senate connected the anticolonial activism of women in the Antilles and French Equatorial Africa, and extended this activism beyond the borders of imperial France to include the United States. Both women forged transnational black feminist networks and thus claimed multiple communities and political affiliations that often defied imperial and national borders.

Trans Studies and Resistance in an Academy Based on Masculinity Contest Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-420
Author(s):  
Travers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Tenure Track ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
Labor Pool ◽  
Trans Women

Abstract Trans studies is a burgeoning and global interdisciplinary field of scholarship. Although trans people in general continue to remain on the margins of the academy in Canada and the United States, some of the trans scholars who contribute to the field of trans studies are in continuing faculty (tenure-track and tenured) positions. Trans women in general and trans women and trans feminine people of color, in particular, however, are particularly underrepresented in this labor pool. The author brings together a theoretical pastiche consisting of a Black feminist analysis of patriarchy as a layered phenomenon, trans necropolitics, and a masculinity contest culture paradigm to trouble this limit to representation within trans studies in Canada and the United States.

scholarly journals On the Record: Sissieretta Jones and Black Feminist Recording Praxes

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-42
Author(s):  
Kristin Moriah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Role Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Performance Reviews ◽  
Madison Square Garden ◽  
German Newspapers

In this article, I examine how Sissieretta Jones (frequently described as America’s first Black superstar, among other superlatives) strategically leveraged her European performance reviews in order to increase her listenership and wages in the United States. Jones toured Europe for the first (and only) time from February until November in 1895. According to clippings that she provided to African American newspapers, the singer performed at the renowned Winter Garden in Berlin for three months. Sissieretta Jones also claimed that she performed for Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, at his palace and was subsequently presented with an elaborate diamond brooch for her performance. Afterward, the singer told the African American newspaper the Indianapolis Freeman that she would like to live in Europe permanently. Her biographers frequently cite the success of this trip and its symbolic importance for African Americans. And yet, evidence of these events in the archives of major German newspapers is elusive and contradictory at best, if it exists at all. Nevertheless, after the much-hyped tour, her career would take many twists and turns. Sissieretta Jones eventually performed in venues like Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden. She was the highest-paid Black female performer of the nineteenth century and a role model for future generations of Black performers.

Breaking Silence

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-122
Author(s):  
M. Jacqui Alexander ◽  
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Colleges ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Progressive Change ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
Black Colleges And Universities

The coauthors of this chapter write about having obtained a grant from the Arcus Foundation to conceptualize a radical project to advance the equality of black GLBT students. They titled the project: “Facilitating Campus Climates of Pluralism, Inclusivity, and Progressive Change at HBCUs.” Writing about their vision of it in this chapter, the coauthors share the historically groundbreaking plan for the work they began together in 2006 to challenge “historical black colleges and universities” (HBCUs) in the United States to eradicate heteronormative and homophobic ideas of black identity. As an “introduction” to the aim and goals they sought to accomplish, these two esteemed black feminist scholars in women’s studies connect their project to Walker’s womanist concept of love for all LGBT black “Folk.”

From Combahee resistance to the Confederate: Black feminist temporalities and white supremacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 518-535
Author(s):  
Tanya Ann Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Combahee River Collective

In the weeks preceding the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, VA on 12 August 2017, HBO responded to criticism of Game of Thrones’ whiteness by announcing a new series from its producers called Confederate that imagined an alternative history in which the Confederacy became its own nation and slavery still existed. A few weeks later, Representative Maxine Waters’ refusal to listen to white male practices of diversion and condescension under the guise of flattery made national news when she interrupted Treasury Secretary Mnuchin's stalling to “reclaim my time.” In this paper, I examine these events as representative of the prevalent contention in the United States that the post-2016 election era is an era of crisis, but look outside the ruling temporality of crisis as it is framed through white supremacy. Reinterpreting this crisis through the lens of black feminist insurgencies against white supremacy demonstrates how the ruling temporalities of mainstream feminism are implicated in the election of 2016 and the events following. In returning to the year 1977 and aligning two feminist moments from that year, the Combahee River Collective Statement and the National Women’s Conference, I argue for a recalibration of feminist temporalities that will allow us, as Lisa Lowe argues, to recuperate the future in the tense of the past conditional, to see “what could have been” as that which may yet be.

High Risk Community—Men’s Perceptions of Black Infant Mortality: A Qualitative Inquiry

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 224-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwendolyn P. Quinn ◽  
Euna M. August ◽  
Deborah Austin ◽  
Candace Keefe ◽  
Christina Bernadotte ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Infant

Infant mortality has been identified as a key public health concern in the United States. Although infant mortality rates (IMRs) in the United States have declined during the past 10 years, the rates among Blacks are more than two times higher as compared with other racial and ethnic groups. This study used focus groups to explore Black men’s awareness and perceptions of the rising IMR in their community. Twenty-five men participated in an initial and follow-up focus group, which revealed that men had limited awareness of infant mortality, reduced sense of personal responsibility for pregnancy outcomes, and perceptions that stress, the age of the mother, and the health care system were responsible for poor birth outcomes. The role of the community and possible interventions to involve and educate men were also explored.

Arab and Black Feminisms

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Naber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Resource Center ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Black Feminisms ◽  
The 1960S

This essay explores the conditions out of which a diasporic anti-imperialist Arab feminist group came into alignment with the Women of Color Resource Center. It focuses on the history and leaders of the Women of Color Resource Center and its roots in the 1960s and 1970s people of color and women of color based movements in the United States in order to map alliances among black feminist thought, radical women of color movements, and Palestinian de-colonization then and now.

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