Description
Book SynopsisNessette Falu explores how Black lesbians in Brazil define and sustain their well-being and self-worth against persistent racial, sexual, class, and gender-based prejudice within hostile gynecological spaces.
Trade Review“An original and necessary work,
Unseen Flesh opens an important critical window on well-being and gynecological health in Brazil, which are colored and conditioned by race/color, class, and sexual identity. Nessette Falu’s focus on Black Brazilian lesbians is historic and significant in itself—the result of her long-term, invested, and loving encounters with people who had been silenced.” -- Jafari S. Allen, author of * There’s a Disco Ball between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Bearing Witness to Unseen Flesh 1
1. The Virgin Who Lives within Her Erotic Worth 21
2. Unseen Flesh: Gynecological Trauma, Emotional Power, and Intimate Sociomedical Violence 51
Interlude One: Angela 77
3. The Social Clinic: Mapping the Social and Colonial World of Gynecology 79
Interlude Two: It Doesn’t Matter 111
4. Are
We Ethical Subjects? Seeing Ourselves in Shapeshifting Ethics 113
5.
Bem-Estar Negra:
Lésbicas Negras’ Beautiful Experiments of Worth 141
Notes 169
References 179
Index 195