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    Black Female Sexualities

    Trimiko Melancon (Edited by), Joanne M. Braxton (Edited by), Melissa Harris-Perry (Foreword by), Trimiko Melancon (Contributions by), Kimberly Juanita Brown (Contributions by), Courtney J. Patterson (Contributions by), Mel Michelle Lewis (Contributions by), Esther L. Jones (Contributions by), Ariane Cruz (Contributions by), Mahaliah Ayana Little (Contributions by), K. T. Ewing (Contributions by), Cherise A. Pollard (Contributions by), Sandra C. Duvivier (Contributions by), Erin D. Chapman (Contributions by), Johanna X. K. Garvey (Contributions by), Ayana K. Weekley (Contributions by), Joanne M. Braxton (Contributions by)

    9780813571744

    Hardback, published 26 January 2015

    224 pages, 5 illustrations
    22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.513 kg

    "This is a rich, multifaceted volume that leaves few if any stones unturned in exploring the themes of sex, sexuality, and feminism in relation to Black women."
    - Noliwe Rooks (Cornell University)
    "This volume provides an illuminating discourse about the meaning, metaphors, and magnitude of black female sexuality as an agent of both oppression and transformation."
    - Paula J. Giddings (author of IDA: A Sword Among Lions)

    Western culture has long regarded black female sexuality with a strange mix of fascination and condemnation, associating it with everything from desirability, hypersexuality, and liberation to vulgarity, recklessness, and disease. Yet even as their bodies and sexualities have been the subject of countless public discourses, black women’s voices have been largely marginalized in these discussions. In this groundbreaking collection, feminist scholars from across the academy come together to correct this omission-illuminating black female sexual desires marked by agency and empowerment, as well as pleasure and pain, to reveal the ways black women regulate their sexual lives. 

    The twelve original essays in Black Female Sexualities reveal the diverse ways black women perceive, experience, and represent sexuality. The contributors highlight the range of tactics that black women use to express their sexual desires and identities. Yet they do not shy away from exploring the complex ways in which black women negotiate the more traumatic aspects of sexuality and grapple with the legacy of negative stereotypes. 

    Black Female Sexualities takes not only an interdisciplinary approach-drawing from critical race theory, sociology, and performance studies-but also an intergenerational one, in conversation with the foremothers of black feminist studies. In addition, it explores a diverse archive of representations, covering everything from blues to hip-hop, from Crash to Precious, from Sister Souljah to Edwidge Danticat. Revealing that black female sexuality is anything but a black-and-white issue, this collection demonstrates how to appreciate a whole spectrum of subjectivities, experiences, and desires.  

    Foreword

    Melissa Harris-Perry

    Introduction    “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff”: Black Female Sexualities and Black Feminist Intervention-Trimiko Melancon

    Part I Sexual Embod(y)ment: Framing the Body

    Chapter 1        Entering Through the Body’s Frame: Precious and the Subjective Delineations of the Movie Poster Kimberly
    Juanita Brown


    Chapter 2        Is It Just Baby F(Ph)at?: Black Female Teenagers, Body Size, and Sexuality

    Courtney J. Patterson


    Chapter 3        Corporeal Presence: Engaging the Black Lesbian Pedagogical Body in Feminist Classrooms and College Communities

    Mel Michelle Lewis


    Chapter 4        Untangling Pathology: Sex, Social Responsibility, and the Black Female Youth in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling

    Esther L. Jones


    Part II         Disengaging the Gaze


    Chapter 5        Mis(Playing) Blackness: Rendering Black Female Sexuality in The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

    Ariane Cruz


    Chapter 6        Why Don’t We Love These Hoes?: Black Women, Popular Culture, and the Contemporary Hoe Archetype

    Mahaliah Ayana Little


    Chapter 7        What Kind of Woman?: Alberta Hunter and Expressions of Black Female Sexuality in the Twentieth Century

    K. T. Ewing


    Chapter 8        The “P-Word” Exchange: Representing Black Female Sexuality in Contemporary Urban Fiction

    Cherise A. Pollard


    Part III        Resisting Erasure


    Chapter 9        “Ou libÉrÉ?”: Sexual Abuse and Resistance in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory

    Sandra C. Duvivier


    Chapter 10      Rape Fantasies and Other Assaults: Black Women’s Sexuality and Racial Redemption on Film

    Erin D. Chapman


    Chapter 11      “Embrace the Narrative of the Whole”: Complicating Black Female Sexuality in Contemporary Fiction

    Johanna X. K. Garvey


    Chapter 12      Saving Me through Erasure?: Black Women, HIV/AIDS and Respectability

    Ayana K. Weekley


    Afterword: Being Present, Facing Forward

    Joanne M. Braxton


    Bibliography


    Notes on Contributors
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