Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism is a 1981 book by bell hooks titled after Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. hooks examines the effect of racism and sexism on black women, the civil rights movement, and feminist movements from suffrage to the 1970s. She argues that the convergence of sexism and racism during slavery contributed to black women having the lowest status and worst conditions of any group in American society. White female abolitionists and suffragists were often more comfortable with black male abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, while southern segregationalists and stereotypes of Black female promiscuity and immorality caused protests whenever black women spoke. Hooks points out that these white female reformers were more concerned with white morality than the conditions these morals caused black Americans.
Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She was best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. She used the lower-case spelling of her name to decenter herself and draw attention to her work instead. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed love, race, social class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.
The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book written and illustrated by Scottish author Helen Bannerman and published by Grant Richards in October 1899. As one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children, the story was popular for more than half a century.
Annie Allen is a book of poetry by American author Gwendolyn Brooks that was published by Harper & Brothers in 1949. The book tells in poetry about the life of Annie Allen, an African-American girl growing to adulthood. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and made Brooks the first African American to ever receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Conduct books or conduct literature is a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms and ideals. As a genre, they began in either the High Middle Ages or the Late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep are among the earliest surviving works. Conduct books remained popular through the 18th century, although they gradually declined with the advent of the novel.
Romiette and Julio is a young adult novel by Sharon Draper, published in 1999 by Atheneum Books. It is an updated version of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Many of the characters in Draper's novel closely parallel those in Shakespeare's play. The plot updates the family feud between the Capulets and Montagues to reflect modern racial tensions between African-Americans and Hispanics in the United States. The book received mixed reviews.
A Wreath for Udomo is a 1956 novel by the South African novelist Peter Abrahams. The novel follows a London-educated black African, Michael Udomo, who returns to Africa to become a revolutionary leader in the fictional country of Panafrica and is eventually martyred. The novel explores a revolutionary politics, exploring the diversity of actors and political communities needed to overcome colonial oppression.
Salamishah Margaret Tillet is an American scholar, writer, and feminist activist. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University–Newark, where she also directs the New Arts Justice Initiative. Tillet is also a contributing critic-at-large at The New York Times.
Another Brooklyn is a 2016 novel by Jacqueline Woodson. The book was written as an adult book, unlike many of the author's previous books and titles. NPR wrote that the book was "full of dreams and danger". It was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016.
Lois E. Horton was an American historian, specializing in African American history. She co-authored numerous foundational studies of nineteenth-century African American history and abolitionism.
Girl studies, also known as girlhood studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field of study that is focused on girlhood and girls' culture that combines advocacy and the direct perspectives and thoughts of girls themselves. The field emerged in the 1990s after decades of falling under the broader field of women's studies. Scholars within girl studies examine social and cultural elements of girlhood and move away from an adult-centered focus. Those working in the field of girl studies have studied it primarily in relation to other fields that include sociology, psychology, education, history, literary studies, media studies, and communication studies. Girl studies seeks to work directly with girls themselves in order to analyze their lives and understand the large societal forces at play within them. Scholars in girl studies also explore the connection the field has to women's studies, boyhood studies, and masculinity studies. There are many different definitions of what a girl is. Some may say that a girl is under the age of 18. Catherine Driscoll discusses how in the nineteenth century, girls were traditionally defined as younger than the age of consent. Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh discuss girlhood beginning from birth to late twenties. Girlhood is often designated by age and consists of imitating observed and learned adult behavior.
Kyra Danielle Gaunt is an African American ethnomusicologist, Black girlhood studies advocate, social media researcher, feminist performance artist, and professor at the University at Albany in New York State. Gaunt's research focuses on the hidden musicianship of black girls' musical play at the intersections of race, racism, gender, heterosexism, misogynoir, age, and the kinetic-orality of the female body in the age of hip-hop. Her current research focuses on "the unintended consequences of gender, race, and technology from YouTube to Wikipedia."
Thick: And Other Essays is a collection of essays by the American sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. The book explores a range of topics, including black womanhood, body image, and McMillan Cottom's experience as a Southern black woman academic. Published in 2019 by The New Press, Thick was a finalist for that year's National Book Award.
Kali Nicole Gross is an American historian. She is an African American Studies professor at Emory University. She is also a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians, and the 2019–2021 National Publications Director of the Association of Black Women Historians. She is an expert on the experiences of African American women in the United States criminal justice system in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She has written about how these experiences reflect the roles of race and gender in late nineteenth-century urban America, particularly Philadelphia.
Joyce Viola Hansen is an American writer and retired schoolteacher. She has earned recognition for her books for children and youth, particularly her historical fiction and non-fiction works about African-American history.
Mildred Pitts Walter is an American children's book writer, known for her works featuring African-American protagonists. Walter has written over 20 books for young readers, including fiction and nonfiction. Several of her books have won or been named to the honor list of the Coretta Scott King Awards. A native of Louisiana who later moved to Denver, Walter was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. She published her autobiography, Something Inside So Strong: Life in Pursuit of Choice, Courage, and Change, in 2019.
In Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, Dorothy Roberts analyzes the reproductive rights of black women in the United States throughout history. Published in 1997 by Pantheon Books, this book details a history of reproductive oppression that spans from the commodification of enslaved women's fertility to forced sterilizations of African American and Latina women in the 20th century. Through these accounts, Roberts makes the case that reproductive justice is a necessary part of the greater struggle for racial equality.
Noliwe Rooks is an American academic and author. She is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor and chair of Africana Studies at Brown University and is the founding director of the Segrenomics Lab at Brown. She previously held the W.E.B. Du Bois Professorship of Literature at Cornell University.
Adele Logan Alexander is history professor at George Washington University and an author. She is known for her work on family history, gender, and social issues in African American families.
