Black History

With the emergence of popular culture phenomena such as reality television, blogging, and social networking sites, it is important to examine the representation of Black women and the potential implications of those images, messages, and roles. Black Women and Popular Culture: The Conversation Continues provides such a comprehensive analysis. Using an array of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, this collection features cutting edge research from scholars interested in the relationship among media, society, perceptions, and Black women. The uniqueness of this book is that it serves as a compilation of "hot topics" including ABC's Scandal, Beyonc 's Visual Album, and Oprah's Instagram page. Other themes have roots in reality television, film, and hip hop, as well as issues of gender politics, domestic violence, and colorism. The discussion also extends to the presentation and inclusion of Black women in advertising, print, and digital media.

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From furious debate on the Web about Michelle Obama's straightened hair to keen interest in model Tyra Banks's revelation of the hair she usually hides under wigs and weaves, Black women's hair has taken a prime place on the pop cultural agenda. More than just a fashion statement, a Black woman's choice of hairstyle can reflect her self-image, childhood experiences, and personal beliefs as well. Using interviews, memoirs, and personal essays, this book sensitively charts Black women's journeys with their hair: how it is perceived, judged, and graded on the yardstick of mainstream society's standards of beauty. Women from Canada, the United States, Britain, and the Caribbean discuss their lives through the medium of their hair. Unhappy childhood struggles with the comb, adolescent experiments with identity through hair, and adult decisions for or against "natural" hair are all expressed with honesty, some wry humour, and the poignant realization that hair can be another social battlefield.

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"Our Black Sons Matter is a powerful collection of original essays, letters, and poems that addresses both the deep joys and the very real challenges of raising black boys today. From Trayvon Martin to Tamir Rice, the list of young black men who have suffered racial violence continues to grow. Young black people also deal with profound stereotypes and structural barriers. And yet, young black men are often paradoxically revered as icons of cultural cool. Our Black Sons Matter features contributions from women across the racial spectrum who are raising or have raised black sons--whether biologically their sons or not. The book courageously addresses painful trauma, challenges assumptions, and offers insights and hope through the deep bonds between mothers and their children. Both a collective testimony and a collective love letter, Our Black Sons Matter sends the message that black lives matter and speaks with the universal love of all mothers who fear for the lives of their children."--Provided by publisher.

"This book explains how faith, politics, and fear contribute to the homophobic mindset within the Black Church and the African American community."--Provided by publisher.

In thirteen candid and provocative essays, author Jarrett Neal reports on the status of black gay men in the new millennium, examining classism among black gay men, racism within the gay community, representations of the black male body within gay pornography, and patriarchal threats to the survival of both black men and gay men. What Color Is Your Hoodie? employs the author's own quest for visibility--through bodybuilding, creative writing, and teaching, among other pursuits--as the genesis for an insightful and critical dialogue that ultimately symbolizes the entire black gay community's struggle for recognition and survival.

Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible-gay women of color-in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, Invisible Families explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find partners, and form families. In particular, the study looks at the ways in which the past experiences of women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s shape their thinking.

"Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and writers whom readers may be surprised to learn were "in the life," Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay and bisexual writers ever published. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Great Migration of the Depression era, from the postwar civil rights, feminist and gay liberation movements to the unabashedly complex sexual explorations that followed, Black Like Us accomplishes a sweeping survey of twentieth century American literature."--Back cover.

As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower-middle class to middle-middle class to upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These "blue-chip black" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.

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In Black on the Block , Mary Pattillo--a Newsweek Woman of the 21st Century--uses the historic rise, alarming fall, and equally dramatic renewal of Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood to explore the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America.

With this purported new 'era of high-profile, mega successful, black women who are changing the face of every major field worldwide' and growing socioeconomic diversity among black women as the backdrop, Embracing Sisterhood seeks to determine where contemporary black women's ideas of black womanhood and sisterhood merge with social class status to shape certain attachments and detachments among them. Similarities as well as variations in how black women of different social backgrounds perceive and live black womanhood are interpreted for a range of social contexts. This book confirms what many of today's African-American women and interested observers have known for some time: Conceptions and experience of black womanhood are quite diverse and appear to have grown more diverse over time.

About 337,000 people of French Antillean Origin live in metropolitan France today. Unlike immigrants from North Africa, Turkey or sub-Saharan Africa, Antilleans are French citizens with deep roots in French history. Indeed, the Caribbean Islands they come from have been a part of France for over three centuries. Antilleans were for many years an invisible population, dispersed throughout the Paris region, with few community organizations and little political activism. Beginning in the early 1980s, however, activists in the Antillean community began to recognize that their status as citizens would not protect them from the growth of racism in France. From neighborhood groups interested in promoting traditional Martinican and Guadeloupan dance and music to politically charged associations, these new cultural militants denounced French colonialism, challenged racism, and demanded political representation. Black Skins, French Voices is situated at the intersection of changing French ideas and policies regarding ethnic diversity and Antillean demands for recognition. It shows the creative and exciting struggles of Antilleans to remake French culture on their own terms.

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It's hard to imagine an issue or image more riveting than Black Germans during the Third Reich. Yet accounts of their lives are virtually nonexistent, despite the fact that they lived through a regime dedicated to racial purity.
Tina Campt's Other Germans tells the story of this largely forgotten group of individuals, with important distinctions from other accounts. Most strikingly, Campt centers her arguments on race, rather than anti-semitism. She also provides oral history as background for her study, interviewing two Black Germans for the book.

This title explores the political significance of ethnicity for new immigrant and native-born blacks. Utilizing an original survey of a New York City labour population and multiple national data sources, it concludes that racial and ethnic identities affect the ways in which black ethnic groups conceptualize their possibilities for advancement and placement within the American polity.

Stories of race and identity in contemporary Cuba.