Description
Book SynopsisRepresenting the sexuality of black middle class women in contemporary popular culture
Trade ReviewReceived an honorable mention for the National Women's Studies Association's Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, 2010.
“[Thompson] finds that some Black women are pioneering new ways to be and to give voice to a more fully actualized, human, female persona. This new woman is long overdue.”--
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education"In refreshingly clear prose, Lisa B. Thompson renders a complex and nuanced reading of black middle-class women from both fiction and real life. This study makes an important intervention in the discourse on what has heretofore been an under-theorized subject."--E. Patrick Johnson, author of
Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South"A path-breaking, cogently argued, bold study of the ways in which black women writers and public figures have engaged, confronted, resisted, or overturned prevailing notions of black middle-class women's sexuality. This book makes a powerful contribution to debates in race studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, and literary and cultural studies."--Valerie Smith, author of
Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist ReadingsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction
Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class 1
Part 1: Performing Identity 1. Spectacle of the Respectable: Anita Hill and the Problem of Innocence 21
2. Staging Black Female Desire: The Drama of Race, Class, and Sexuality 43
3. Black Ladies and Black Magic Women:Independent Film and Black Sexuality 72
Part 2: Refashioning the Black Female Self 4. Narrating Sexuality in Contemporary African American Autobiography 97
5. Sex, Travel, and the Single African American Girl: Andrea Lee's
Sarah Phillips 118
Epilogue 137
Notes 141
Index 175
