WINNER OF THE W.E.B. DUBOIS DISTINGUISHED BOOK AWARD, GIVEN BY THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF BLACK POLITICAL SCIENTISTS A wide-ranging Black feminist interrogation, reaching from the #MeToo movement to the legacy of gender-based violence against Black women From Michelle Obama to Condoleezza Rice, Black women are uniquely scrutinized in the public eye. In Re-Imagining Black Women, Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd explores how Black women—and Blackness more broadly—are understood in our political imagination and often become the subjects of public controversy. Drawing on politics, popular culture, psychoanalysis, and more, Alexander-Floyd examines our conflicting ideas, opinions, and narratives about Black women, showing how they are equally revered and reviled as an embodiment of good and evil, cast either as victims or villains, citizens or outsiders. Ultimately, Alexander-Floyd showcases the complex experiences of Black women as political subjects. At a time of extreme racial tension, Re-Imagining Black Women provides insight into the parts that Black women play, and are expected to play, in politics and popular culture.

Statistics state that 70 Percent of Black women are single. And many believe that it’s because Black women can’t find a “good” Black man. However, what’s keeping Black women single isn’t a shortage of “good” Black men it’s the fact that most Black women have learned a life paradigm from her mother that prevents her from having a successful relationship with any man. In this eBook Shawn James explains all the historical, economic, political and social reasons leading to many Black women being single and how many of the approaches Black women have learned growing up from their mothers and grandmothers will keep them single and their daughters single in some cases for the rest of their lives.

A powerful account of violence against Black women and girls in the United States and their fight for liberation. America, Goddam explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Through personal accounts and hard-hitting analysis, Black feminist historian Treva B. Lindsey starkly assesses the forms and legacies of violence against Black women and girls, as well as their demands for justice for themselves and their communities. America, Goddam powerfully demonstrates that the struggle for justice begins with reckoning with the pervasiveness of violence against Black women and girls in the United States. Combining history, theory, and memoir, America, Goddam renders visible the gender dynamics of anti-Black violence. Black women and girls occupy a unique status of vulnerability to harm and death, while the circumstances and traumas of this violence go underreported and understudied. Lindsey also shows that the sanctity of life and liberty for Black men has been a galvanizing rallying cry within Black freedom movements. But Black women—who have been both victims of anti-Black violence as well as frontline participants in it, and quite often architects of these freedom movements—are rarely the focus. Black women have led movements demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Toyin Salau, Riah Milton, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and countless other Black women and girls whose lives have been curtailed by numerous forms of violence. Across generations and centuries, their refusal to remain silent about violence against them led many to envisioning and building toward Black liberation through organizing and radical politics. Echoing the energy of Nina Simone's searing protest song that inspired the title, America, Goddam is a call to action in our collective journey toward just futures.

In 10 Bad Choices That Ruin Black Women's Lives, relationship expert Dr. Grace Cornish writes a lively, practical, provocative guide for black women everywhere who want to shed the duds and find the studs who will treat them with respect. According to Dr. Cornish, six out of every ten black women are either in bad relationships, share a man, or are celibate. The problem is not the women themselves but the bad choices they keep making. In her frank and refreshing new book, Dr. Cornish speaks to unique aspects of the African American female psyche by targeting ten of the most common and foolish choices black women make in their lives regarding men, and how they can correct these problems, including: Sisters Dissin' Sisters No Money, No Honey Exchanging "Sexual Dealings" for Loving Feelings Loving the "Married Bachelor" Emotional Dependency Plus Unplanned Pregnancy . . . and much more. Relying on case studies, interviews, and letters she has received, Dr. Cornish gets to the heart of the matter by illuminating why black women, no matter how smart, savvy, and successful, continue to lose at the dating game, and how they can face, erase, and replace the problems that have kept them from finding true love. Why are so many black women alone or in bad relationships? Why do sisters unconsciously use weight, fear, finance, status, skin color, and other barriers to keep themselves from getting the love they want? Why do black women think that there are no eligible black men left--that the good ones are married, dead, or not yet born, and the rest are gay, bisexual, or interested only in white women?

This book critically analyzes the portrayals of Black women in current reality television. Audiences are presented with a multitude of images of Black women fighting, arguing, and cursing at one another in this manufactured world of reality television. This perpetuation of negative, insidious racial and gender stereotypes influences how the U.S. views Black women. This stereotyping disrupts the process in which people are able to appreciate cultural and gender difference. Instead of celebrating the diverse symbols and meaning making that accompanies Black women's discourse and identities, reality television scripts an artificial or plastic image of Black women that reinforces extant stereotypes. This collection's contributors seek to uncover examples in reality television shows where instantiations of Black women's gendered, racial, and cultural difference is signified and made sinister.

"Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood" investigates the typecasting of Black womanhood and the larger sociological impact on Black women’s self-perceptions. It details the historical and contemporary use of stereotypes against Black women and how these women work to challenge and dispel false perceptions. The book highlights the role of racist ideas in the reproduction and promotion of stereotypes of Black femaleness in media, literature, artificial intelligence and the perceptions of the general public. Contributors in this collection identify the racist and sexist ideologies behind the misperceptions of Black womanhood and illuminate twenty-first–century stereotypical treatment of Black women such as Michelle Obama and Serena Williams, and explore topics such as comedic expressions of Black motherhood, representations of Black women in television dramas and literature, and identity reclamation and self-determination. "Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood" establishes the criteria with which to examine the role of stereotypes in the lives of Black women and, more specifically, its impact on their social and psychological well-being.

Why we hate Black Women: Deconstructing the Paradox of Black Female Masculinity is a book that takes a critical look at the lives of Black Women in order to answer a few questions: Why are so many Black women alone? Why are they abused, abandoned, betrayed, devalued and haled? This quest for truth opens up a cultural Pandora's Box of issues that date back over 400 years. Whether we're discussing corporate women, college women, church women or economically challenged women, their stories are the same. Whether they've reached the heights of an Oprah Winfrey or have struggled to make ends meet, there is one chord that binds them all together - the stigma of what it means to be Black and female in America. Why We Hate Black Women helps to close the ever-increasing historic wedge in Black relationships in order to heal our families and rebuild our communities.

A professor of sociology explores how black feminist thought confronts the injustices of poverty and white supremacy, and argues that those operating outside the mainstream emphasize sociological themes based on assumptions different than those commonly accepted. Original. UP.

A collection of first-person accounts documenting a historical legacy of violence against black women in the U.S. In Wounds of the Spirit, Traci West employs first person accounts-from slave narratives to contemporary interviews to Tina Turner's autobiography-to document a historical legacy of violence against black women in the United States. West, a black feminist Christian ethicist, situates spiritual matters within a discussion of the psycho-social impact of intimate assault against African American women. Distinctive for its treatment of the role of the church in response to violence against African American women, the book identifies specific social mechanisms which contribute to the reproduction of intimate violence. West insists that cultural beliefs as well as institutional practices must be altered if we are to combat the reproduction of violence, and suggests methods of resistance which can be utilized by victim-survivors, those in the helping professions, and the church. Interrogating the dynamics of black women's experiences of emotional and spiritual trauma through the diverse disciplines of psychology, sociology, and theology, this important work will be of interest and practical use to those in women's studies, African American studies, Christian ethics, feminist and womanist theology, women's health, family counseling, and pastoral care.

Rooted in the ways Black women understand their lives, this collection archives practices of healing, mothering, and advocacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing that Black women have been living in pandemics as far back as colonialism and enslavement, this volume acknowledges that records of the past—from the 1918 flu pandemic to the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic—often erase the existence and experiences of Black women as a whole. Writing against this archival erasure, this collection consciously recenters the real-time experiences and perspectives of care, policy concerns, grief, and joy of Black women throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Nineteen contributors from interdisciplinary fields and diverse backgrounds explore Black feminine community, consciousness, ethics of care, spirituality, and social critique. They situate Black women’s multidimensional experiences with COVID-19 and other violences that affect their lives. The stories they tell are connected and interwoven, bound together by anti-Black gendered COVID necropolitics and commitments to creating new spaces for breathing, healing, and wellness. Ultimately, this time-warping analysis shows how Black women imagine a more just society, rapidly adapt to changing experiences, and innovate ethics of care even in the midst of physical distancing, which can be instructive for thinking of new ways of living both during and beyond the era of COVID-19. Contributors Shamara Wyllie Alhassan Sharnnia Artis Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards Candace S. Brown Jenny Douglas Kaja Dunn Onisha Etkins Rhonda M. Gonzales Endia Hayes Ashley E. Hollingshead Kendra Jason Julia S. Jordan-Zachery Stacie LeSure Janaka B. Lewis Michelle Meggs Nitya Mehrotra Sherine Andreine Powerful Marjorie Shavers Breauna Marie Spencer Tehia Starker Glass Amber Walker