The Book of Joy

2019 ◽  
pp. 250-259
Author(s):  
Anya M. Wallace ◽  
Jillian Hernandez
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
South African ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Collection Selection ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Young Black Women ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Writing Practice

The Book of Joy is an exhibition for which we have compiled an eclectic collection of images, poems, and interview transcripts culled from our research on queer young black women’s sexualities and arts-based community work. Taking our cue from the practice and passion of Zanele Muholi, a black queer South African artist and activist based in Johannesburg who generates portraits of queer communities, we purposefully stray from our scholarly essay writing practice here in order to situate an evocative and more direct accounting of black queer young women’s erotics within the larger framework of this anthology. Although the work of our participants is nevertheless mediated through our process of collection, selection, framing, and ordering, we, like Zanele, believe that the creative expression and documentation of queer black lives is a significant politic. This project stems from the desire to witness and consume representations of Black female sexuality that are diverse, full, and comprehensive. In curating this exhibition, we draw on our action research designed to facilitate collective learning experiences with young Black women and girls in regards to visual culture, sex, sexuality, and pleasure. When the discussion of black queer young women’s lives is either non-existent or saturated by the overwhelming realities of harassment, trauma, depression, and violence that can also mark them, a focus on pleasure becomes an urgent project.

“Keeping it Fresh”: How Young Black Women Negotiate Self–Representation and Controlling Images in Urban Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis S. McCurn
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Young Black Women

Few scholars have explored the collective experiences of young African American women and their creative strategies for negotiating daily life in distressed neighborhoods. This study draws on nearly two years of field research in East Oakland, California, to provide an ethnographic account of how young Black women negotiate daily life amid poverty and social isolation while managing the emotional impact of stigma associated with poverty. The accounts from young women in this study reveal the situated strategy of “keeping it fresh,” a form of impression management that contradicts prevailing notions of what poor Black women and girls ought to look like and, in turn, how they should be treated in public space. Women and girls who keep it fresh invest in constructing and maintaining a neat and stylish appearance enhanced by expensive clothes, shoes, and accessories acquired through informal networks. This form of self–presentation aims to discredit the evaluation of those who keep it fresh as poor and unworthy of respect, if only for a moment.

scholarly journals CASE STUDY NARRATIVE ACCOUNTS OF GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN YOUNG BLACK WOMEN FROM AN EASTERN CAPE TOWNSHIP IN SOUTH AFRICA

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mzikazi Nduna
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Women ◽  
South African ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Young Black Women ◽  
Personal Accounts

In South Africa, the experiences of gender non-conforming young women, as a population separate from adults, are understudied. This article explores what distresses young gender non-conforming females from a South African township. The challenges facing such women growing up in a township in the Eastern Cape province in South Africa are discussed and illuminated through case studies of participants’ personal accounts. The sample was obtained through snowballing. One-on-one in-depth interviews were held and subjected to domain analysis. Domains discovered were: pressure to conform to a female gender identity to be like a lady; being misunderstood in their communities; and disapproval from peers, family and other members of society. The challenges young, black, gender non-conforming girls faced in growing up were based on familial, personal and social factors. Familial and social environments, such as the school, seemed to have a policing effect. Concerns about being isolated, ousted and alienated from society resulted in perceptions that their homes and schools were unsafe and insecure environments. Education and culturally competent support services are needed to educate families about the importance of offering protective support to adolescents, and for schools to create a comfortable environment for gender non-conforming female learners.

Queer Seductions of the Maternal in Dorothy Macardle's Earth-bound

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-308
Author(s):  
Abigail L. Palko
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Maternal Attitudes ◽  
Female Autonomy ◽  
National Autonomy ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Sacrifice

During her lifetime, Dorothy Macardle was a prominent public intellectual in both her native Ireland and post-war Europe. Her passionate engagement in Irish nationalism found expression in her writing; in her only collection of short stories, Earth-bound: Nine Stories of Ireland, published early in her writing career, she protests Irish women's socially restricted status and offers literary models of female solidarity to her audience (her fellow prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol, where she was imprisoned during the Civil War). Complex and ambiguous messages regarding maternal attitudes and female sexuality are encoded within the collection, particularly in the two Maeve stories (as I have labelled them because of their shared narrator), ‘The Return of Niav’ and ‘The Portrait of Roisin Dhu’, in which she offers coded expressions of the realities of women's lives in early twentieth-century Ireland that the larger public would have preferred remain unspoken, particularly with regard to expressions of maternal inclinations and female sexuality. Earth-bound, driven by her reactions to the many ways that the Irish struggle for national autonomy was purchased by the sacrifice of female autonomy, becomes a vehicle through which she explores socially taboo issues, most notably mothering practices and both heterosexual and homosexual expressions of female sexuality.

The Snow Angel and Other Imprints

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Mona Livholts
Keyword(s):  
Research Process ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Charlotte Perkins Gilman ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Writing Research ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Symbolic Formation ◽  
Writing Practice

This article, written in the form of an untimely academic novella is a text, which explores academic authoring as thinking and writing practice in a place called Sweden. The aim is on inquiries of geographical space, place, and academia, and the interrelation between the social and symbolic formation of class, gender and whiteness. The novella uses different writing strategies and visual representations such as documentary writing and photographing from the research process, letters to a friend, and memories from childhood, based on three generations of women's lives. The methodology can be described as a critical reflexive writing strategy inspired by poststructuralist and postcolonial feminist theory and literary fiction, and additionally by methodological approaches in the humanities and social sciences, such as theorizing of letters, memory work, and narrative, and autobiographical approaches. In particular, it draws on work by the theorist critic and writer of fiction, Hélène Cixous, and the feminist author and theorist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, drawing on interpretation of Cixous' essay “Enter the Theatre” and Gilman's story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Characteristics of the untimely academic novella elaborate with possible forms of the symbolic, visual, and performative photographic and sensory in writing research; furthermore, time, social change, and unfinal endings play a pervasive role. It may be read as a story that situates and theorizes embodyment, landscape, and power through the interweaving of forest rural farming spaces and academic office spaces by tracing autobiographical imprints of an untimely feminist author. “The Snow Angel and Other Imprints” is the second article in a trilogy of untimely academic novellas. The first, with the title “The Professor's Chair,” was published in Swedish in 2007 (in the anthology “Genus och det akademiska skrivandets former,” (Eds.) Bränström Öhman & Livholts), and forthcoming in English in the journal Life Writing 2010.

THE SINS OF THE FATHER: GENDER- BASED VIOLENCE IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Women ◽  
South African ◽  
African Women ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
South African Women

This article explores the complexities of gender-based violence in post-apartheid South Africa and interrogates the socio-political issues at the intersection of class, ‘race’ and gender, which impact South African women. Gender equality is up against a powerful enemy in societies with strong patriarchal traditions such as South Africa, where women of all ‘races’ and cultures have been oppressed, exploited and kept in positions of subservience for generations. In South Africa, where sexism and racism intersect, black women as a group have suffered the major brunt of this discrimination and are at the receiving end of extreme violence. South Africa’s gender-based violence is fuelled historically by the ideologies of apartheid (racism) and patriarchy (sexism), which are symbiotically premised on systemic humiliation that devalues and debases whole groups of people and renders them inferior. It is further argued that the current neo-patriarchal backlash in South Africa foments and sustains the subjugation of women and casts them as both victims and perpetuators of pervasive patriarchal values.

scholarly journals Assessing burden, risk factors, and perceived impact of uterine fibroids on women’s lives in rural Haiti: implications for advancing a health equity agenda, a mixed methods study

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Millien ◽  
Anatole Manzi ◽  
Arlene M. Katz ◽  
Hannah Gilbert ◽  
Mary C. Smith Fawzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Uterine Fibroids ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
University Hospital ◽  
Gynecologic Surgery ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Women's Lives

Abstract Background Uterine fibroids, the most common cause of gynecologic surgery, have a reported cumulative incidence of 59% among Black women in the U.S. Uterine fibroids negatively impact the quality of women’s lives. No study has been found in the literature about fibroids in Haiti. We conducted a mixed methods study to assess the burden and risk factors of uterine fibroids, as well as their effects on women’s quality of life. Methods A convergent mixed methods study was conducted between October 1, 2019 and January 31, 2020 at MUH’s (Mirebalais University Hospital) OB-GYN outpatient department. Quantitatively, in a cross-sectional study 211 women completed consecutively a structured questionnaire. In-depth interviews with 17 women with fibroids and 7 family members were implemented for the qualitative component. Descriptive statistics were calculated for clinical and social demographic variables. Logistic regression was performed to examine associations between fibroids and related risk factors. An inductive thematic process was used to analyze the qualitative data. A joint display technique was used to integrate the results. Results Of 193 women analyzed 116 had fibroids (60.1%). The mean age was 41.3. Anemia was the most frequent complication— 61 (52.6%). Compared to women without uterine fibroids, factors associated with uterine fibroids included income decline (AOR = 4.7, 95% CI: 2.1–10.9, p = < 0.001), excessive expenses for transport (AOR = 4.4, 95% CI: 1.6–12.4, p = 0.005), and family history with uterine fibroids (AOR = 4.6, 95% CI: 1.6–13.6, p = 0.005). In contrast, higher level of education and micro polycystic ovarian syndrome were associated with lower prevalence (AOR = 0.3, 95% CI: 0.1–0.9, p = 0.021) and (AOR = 0.2, 95% CI: 0.1–0.97, p = 0.044), respectively. The qualitative findings delineate how contextual factors such as health system failures, long wait times, gender inequality and poverty negatively affect the quality of women’s lives. The poverty cycle of uterine fibroids emerged. Conclusions A vicious cycle of poverty negatively impacts access to care for uterine fibroids in Haiti. Health insurance, social support, and income generating activities may be keys to promote social justice through access to adequate care for women with uterine fibroids in Haiti.

Black Lives Matter and the revitalization of collective visionary leadership

Leadership ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 174271502097592
Author(s):  
Sarah J Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Visionary Leadership ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Queer

Herein, I share a conversation with Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, as context to detail the collective visionary leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. After highlighting how Garza enacts this tradition in the contemporary era, I revisit Ella Baker’s foundational model of collective visionary leadership from the civil rights era. Collective visionary leadership, embodied across these generations, is local and community-based, centers the power and knowledge of ordinary people, and prioritizes transformative accountability and liberatory visions of the future. Such leadership has been central to a range of transformational movements, and especially those anchored by Black women and Black queer folk. I also consider what critiques of traditional models of leadership collective visionary leadership levies both past and present. I call on all those concerned with the act of leading justly to take up this model.

Untangling discrimination in the private sector workplace in South Africa: Paving the way for Black African women progression to managerial positions

2021 ◽  
pp. 135822912199056
Author(s):  
Motlhatlego Dennis Matotoka ◽  
Kolawole Olusola Odeku
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
South African ◽  
African Women ◽  
The South ◽  
Quota System ◽  
Black African ◽  
Managerial Positions ◽  
Action Measures

Black African women in South Africa are poorly represented at managerial levels in the South African private sector since the advent of democracy. Their exclusion at these occupational levels persists despite the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 (EEA) requiring that the private sector must ensure that all occupational levels are equitably represented and reflects the demographics of South Africa. The South African private sector demonstrates its lack of commitment to proliferating black African women into managerial positions by deliberately engaging in race-based recruitment and failing to develop and promote suitably qualified women into managerial positions. As such, the private sector is failing to create upward mobility for black African women to break the glass ceiling. The EEA requires the private sector to apply affirmative action measures in order to achieve equity in the workplace. It is submitted that since 1998, the private sector has been provided with an opportunity to set it own targets in order to achieve equity. However, 22 years later, black African women are still excluded in key managerial positions. However, the EEA does not specifically impose penalties if the private sector fails to achieve the set targets.This approach has failed to increase the representation of black women in managerial positions. However, the EEA does not specifically impose penalties if the private sector fails to achieve the set targets. Whilst this approach seeks to afford the private sector importunity to set its own target, this approach has failed to increase the representation of black women in managerial positions. Employing black African women in managerial levels enhances their skills and increases their prospects to promotions and assuming further leadership roles in the private sector. This paper seeks to show that the progression of black African women requires South Africa to adopt a quota system without flexibility that will result in the private sector being compelled to appoint suitably qualified black African women in managerial levels.

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