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1
Różalska, Aleksandra. "Transgressing the Controlling Images of African-American Women? Performing Black Womanhood in Contemporary American Television Series." EXtREme 21 Going Beyond in Post-Millennial North American Literature and Culture, no. 15 (Autumn 2021) (November 20, 2021): 273–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.7311/pjas.15/2/2021.07.
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Drawing from intersectionality theories and black feminist critiques of white, masculinist, and racist discourses still prevailing in the American popular culture of the twenty-first century, this article looks critically at contemporary images of African-American women in the selected television series. For at least four decades critics of American popular culture have been pointing to, on the one hand, the dominant stereotypes of African-American women (the so-called controlling images, to use the expression coined by Patricia Hill Collins) resulting from slavery, racial segregation, white racism and sexism as well as, on the other hand, to significant marginalization or invisibility of black women in mainstream film and television productions. In this context, the article analyzes two contemporary television shows casting African-American women as leading characters (e.g., Scandal, 2012-2018 and How To Get Away With Murder, 2014-2020) to see whether these narratives are novel in portraying black women’s experiences or, rather, they inscribe themselves in the assimilationist and post-racial ways of representation.
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Gikandi, Simon. "Paule Marshall and the search for the African diaspora." New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 73, no. 1-2 (January 1, 1999): 83–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/13822373-90002586.
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[First paragraph]The Fiction of Paule Marshall: Reconstructions of History, Culture, and Gender. DOROTHY HAMER DENNISTON. Knoxville: University of Tennesee Press, 1995. xxii + 187 pp. (Paper US$ 15.00)Toward Wholeness in Paule Marshall's Fiction. JOYCE PETTIS.Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995. xi + 173 pp. (Cloth US$ 29.50)Black and Female: Essays on Writings by Black Women in the Diaspora. BRITA LINDBERG-SEYERSTED. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1994. 164 pp. (Paper n.p.)Literary history has not been very kind to Paule Marshall. Even in the early 1980s when literature produced by African-American women was gaining prominence among general readers and drawing the attention of critics, Marshall was still considered to be an enigmatic literary figure, somehow important in the canon but not one of its trend setters. As Mary Helen Washington observed in an influential afterword to Brown Girl, Brownstones, although Marshall had been publishing novels and short stories since the early 1950s, and was indeed the key link between African-American writers of the 1940s and those of the 1960s, she was just being "discovered" in the 1980s. While there has always been a small group of scholars, most notably Kamau Brathwaite, who have called attention to the indispensable role Marshall has played in the shaping of the literary canon of the African Diaspora, and of her profound understanding of the issues that have affected the complex formation and survival of African-derived cultures in the New World, many critics have found it difficult to locate her within the American, African-American, and Caribbean traditions that are the sources of her imagination and the subject of her major works. Marshall has embraced all these cultures in more profound ways than her more famous contemporaries have, but she has not gotten the accolades that have gone to lesser writers like Alice Walker. It is indeed one of the greatest injustices of our time that Walker's limited understanding of the cultures and peoples of the African Diaspora has become the point of reference for North American scholars of Africa, the Caribbean, and South America while Marshall's scholastic engagement with questions of Diaspora has not drawn the same kind of interest.
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Anderson, Susan D. "“Latter-Day Slavery”." California History 97, no. 4 (2020): 137–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ch.2020.97.4.137.
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My research highlights little-known aspects of African American participation in the mobilization on behalf of women’s suffrage in California, an issue of vital importance to African Americans. The history of suffrage in the United States is marked by varying degrees of denial of voting rights to African Americans. In California, African Americans were pivotal participants in three major suffrage campaigns. Based on black women’s support for the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote, black men and women formed a critical political alliance, one in which black men almost universally supported black women’s suffrage. Black women began and continued their activism on behalf of male and female voting rights, not as an extension of white-led suffrage campaigns, but as an expression of African American political culture. African Americans—including black women suffragists—developed their own political culture, in part, to associate with those of similar culture and life experiences, but also because white-led suffrage organizations excluded black members. Black politics in California reflected African Americans’ confidence in black women as political actors and their faith in their own independent efforts to secure the franchise for both black men and women.
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Anderson, Susan D. "“Latter-Day Slavery”." California History 97, no. 4 (2020): 137–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ch.2020.97.4.137.
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My research highlights little-known aspects of African American participation in the mobilization on behalf of women’s suffrage in California, an issue of vital importance to African Americans. The history of suffrage in the United States is marked by varying degrees of denial of voting rights to African Americans. In California, African Americans were pivotal participants in three major suffrage campaigns. Based on black women’s support for the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote, black men and women formed a critical political alliance, one in which black men almost universally supported black women’s suffrage. Black women began and continued their activism on behalf of male and female voting rights, not as an extension of white-led suffrage campaigns, but as an expression of African American political culture. African Americans—including black women suffragists—developed their own political culture, in part, to associate with those of similar culture and life experiences, but also because white-led suffrage organizations excluded black members. Black politics in California reflected African Americans’ confidence in black women as political actors and their faith in their own independent efforts to secure the franchise for both black men and women.
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Abdulsamad, Zhiar Sarkawt, and Juan Abdullah Albanna. "Modernity and Personal Experiments in Walker’s The Color Purple (1982)." JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE STUDIES 5, no. 1 (January 23, 2022): 52–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/jls.5.1.5.
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Women in the modern era have been defined as being revolutionary and opposed to the traditional representation of their lives. Alice Walker (February 1944-) a Pulitzer Prize-winning figure is an African-American novelist, critic and poet who has vigorously defended women's modernist innovations and African American civil rights in her works. Her novel The Color Purple (1982) explores the African American female experience through the life and struggles of the narrator of the novel. What distinguishes The Color Purple is the very feature of psychological state of the heroine whilst struggling for her minimal rights of being a woman and black. The heroine of the novel Celie is revolutionary and anti-traditional. Walker planted her own personal experience within The Color Purple through the sufferings and traumatic life of the female characters.Walker through “Womanism”, a term coined by herself representing Black feminism, combines critical elements in The Color Purple, namely the importance of black history and heritage and the centrality of female creativity and competence in that heritage, which are often symbolized by quilts, sisterhood, liberation, self-identity, double consciousness and other symbols. Further through exhibiting African American woman’s twice-oppressed state, as they were double-discriminated racially and sexually by Americans, on the one hand by white Americans, on the other, by their fellow black male counterparts. The epistolary style of The Color Purple is probably an essential feature of modern literary output. The letters are used to manifest Celie and other characters’ lives to readers. Furthermore, within The Color Purple, Walker employs the very modern African American literary feature which is “Neo-Slave Narrative”. Through Neo-Slave Narrative, she displays her black female characters’ still-enslaved status in the modern era to form a juxtaposition between narrations of her fellow oppressed black women and Slave-Narrations of enslaved African Americans like Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner truth.
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Glapka, Ewa, and Zukiswa Majali. "Between Society and Self: The Socio-Cultural Construction of the Black Female Body and Beauty in South Africa." Qualitative Sociology Review 13, no. 1 (January 31, 2017): 174–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.13.1.10.
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Interested in the socio-cultural construction of the body and beauty, this study investigates the embodied experience of Black African women in South Africa. The Black female body has been problematically positioned in the discourses of beauty. In the dominant, Westernized imagery, the physical markers of blackness such as dark skin and kinky hair have been aesthetically devalued. In the African traditionalist discourses, these body features have been celebrated as beautiful and invoked as the signifiers of cultural pride. This, however, has also been considered as a form of cultural imperative that holds women accountable for how they embody their relationship with their race and ethnicity. Most recently, cultural critics notice the aesthetic revaluation of Black female beauty and ascribe it to the global popularity of the African-American hip-hop culture. In this study, we explore how the socio-cultural complexity of Black female beauty affects the ways in which individuals make sense of their bodies.
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Jallo, Nancy, Lisa Brown, R. K. Elswick, Patricia Kinser, and Amy L. Salisbury. "Happiness in Pregnant African American Women." Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing 35, no. 1 (January 2021): 19–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/jpn.0000000000000529.
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Lang, Eurydice. "Breastfeeding Experiences of African American Women." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 48, no. 3 (June 2019): S130—S131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jogn.2019.04.219.
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Stewart, Jennifer M., Christopher K. Rogers, Dawn Bellinger, and Keitra Thompson. "A Contextualized Approach to Faith-Based HIV Risk Reduction for African American Women." Western Journal of Nursing Research 38, no. 7 (February 15, 2016): 819–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0193945916629621.
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HIV/AIDS has a devastating impact on African Americans, particularly women and young adults. We sought to characterize risks, barriers, and content and delivery needs for a faith-based intervention to reduce HIV risk among African American women ages 18 to 25. In a convergent parallel mixed methods study, we conducted four focus groups ( n = 38) and surveyed 71 young adult women. Data were collected across four African American churches for a total of 109 participants. We found the majority of women in this sample were engaged in behaviors that put them at risk for contracting HIV, struggled with religiously based barriers and matters of sexuality, and had a desire to incorporate their intimate relationships, parenting, and financial burdens into faith-based HIV risk-reduction interventions. Incorporating additional social context–related factors into HIV risk-reduction interventions for young African American women is critical to adapting and developing HIV interventions to reduce risk among young adult women in faith settings.
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Bwalya Lungu, Nancy, and Alice Dhliwayo. "African American Civil Rights Movements to End Slavery, Racism and Oppression in the Post Slavery Era: A Critique of Booker T. Washington’s Integration Ideology." EAST AFRICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 2, Issue 3 (September 30, 2021): 62–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.46606/eajess2021v02i03.0104.
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The Transatlantic Slave trade began during the 15th century when Portugal and subsequently other European kingdoms were able to expand overseas and reach Africa. The Portuguese first began to kidnap people from the West Coast of Africa and took those that they enslaved to Europe. This saw a lot of African men and women transported to Europe and America to work on the huge plantations that the Whites owned. The transportation of these Africans exposed them to inhumane treatments which they faced even upon the arrival at their various destinations. The emancipation Proclamation signed on 1st January 1863 by the United States President Abraham Lincoln saw a legal stop to slave trade. However, the African Americans that had been taken to the United States and settled especially in the Southern region faced discrimination, segregation, violence and were denied civil rights through segregation laws such as the Jim Crow laws and lynching, based on the color of their skin. This forced them especially those that had acquired an education to rise up and speak against this treatment. They formed Civil Rights Movements to advocate for Black rights and equal treatment. These protracted movements, despite continued violence on Blacks, Culminated in Barack Obama being elected the first African American President of the United States of America. To cement the victory, he won a second term, which Donald Trump failed to obtain. This paper sought to critic the philosophies of Booker T. Washington in his civil rights movement, particularly his ideologies of integration, self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation as expressed in his speech, “the Atlanta Compromise,” and the impact this had on the political and civil rights arena for African Americans.
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Bwalya Lungu, Nancy, and Alice Dhliwayo. "African American Civil Rights Movements to End Slavery, Racism and Oppression in the Post Slavery Era: A Critique of Booker T. Washington’s Integration Ideology." EAST AFRICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 2, Issue 3 (September 30, 2021): 62–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.46606/eajess2021v02i03.0104.
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The Transatlantic Slave trade began during the 15th century when Portugal and subsequently other European kingdoms were able to expand overseas and reach Africa. The Portuguese first began to kidnap people from the West Coast of Africa and took those that they enslaved to Europe. This saw a lot of African men and women transported to Europe and America to work on the huge plantations that the Whites owned. The transportation of these Africans exposed them to inhumane treatments which they faced even upon the arrival at their various destinations. The emancipation Proclamation signed on 1st January 1863 by the United States President Abraham Lincoln saw a legal stop to slave trade. However, the African Americans that had been taken to the United States and settled especially in the Southern region faced discrimination, segregation, violence and were denied civil rights through segregation laws such as the Jim Crow laws and lynching, based on the color of their skin. This forced them especially those that had acquired an education to rise up and speak against this treatment. They formed Civil Rights Movements to advocate for Black rights and equal treatment. These protracted movements, despite continued violence on Blacks, Culminated in Barack Obama being elected the first African American President of the United States of America. To cement the victory, he won a second term, which Donald Trump failed to obtain. This paper sought to critic the philosophies of Booker T. Washington in his civil rights movement, particularly his ideologies of integration, self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation as expressed in his speech, “the Atlanta Compromise,” and the impact this had on the political and civil rights arena for African Americans.
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Griffiths, DH, ME Pokorny, and JM Bowman. "Differences in African American and white women with myocardial infarction: history, presentation, diagnostic methods, and infarction type." American Journal of Critical Care 8, no. 2 (March 1, 1999): 101–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.4037/ajcc1999.8.2.101.
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BACKGROUND: Despite overall declining death rates from cardiovascular disease, the number of women dying of cardiovascular disease increases each year, with substantially higher rates in African American women than in white women. OBJECTIVE: To investigate differences in presentation, diagnostic method, and type of infarction between African American and white women with myocardial infarction. METHODS: Chart review of all women with discharge diagnosis of myocardial infarction. RESULTS: No significant differences were found between African American and white women in admitting diagnosis, diagnostic methods, or type of infarction. At the time of admission, 2 medical history variables, stroke and hypertension, differed significantly between African American and white women (P = .027 and P = .002, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare professionals must be aware of possible racial differences in medical history, signs and symptoms, and prognosis when assessing patients and planning interventions. Studies with larger samples are needed to confirm these findings on African American and white women with myocardial infarction.
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Nishikawa, Kinohi. "Driven by the Market: African American Literature after Urban Fiction." American Literary History 33, no. 2 (May 1, 2021): 320–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajab008.
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Abstract Kenneth W. Warren’s What Was African American Literature? (2011) compelled literary historians to question deeply held assumptions about periodization and racial authorship. While critics have taken issue with Warren aligning African American literature with Jim Crow segregation, none has examined his account of what came after this conjuncture: namely, the market’s wholesale cooptation of Black writing. By following the career of African American popular novelist Omar Tyree, this essay shows how corporate publishers in the 1990s and 2000s redefined African American literature as a sales category, one that combined a steady stream of recognized authors with a mad dash for amateur talent. Tyree had been part of the first wave of self-published authors to be picked up by major New York houses. However, as soon as he was made to conform to the industry’s demands, Tyree was eclipsed by Black women writers who developed the hard-boiled romance genre known as urban fiction. As Tyree saw his literary fortunes fade, corporate publishing became increasingly reliant on Black book entrepreneurs to sustain the category of African American literature, thereby turning racial authorship into a vehicle for realizing profits.
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Du Plessis, J. W., and D. H. Steenberg. "Uit die oogpunt van ’n vrou? Perspektief op feministiese literêre kritiek in die kader van die Airikaanse prosa." Literator 12, no. 3 (May 6, 1991): 71–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/lit.v12i3.781.
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Feminists feel that in literary criticism not enough consideration is given to feminism as an ideology in the production of texts. According to them, existing literary criticism is strongly man-centred. This is especially true of the practice of South African literary criticism. Although feminism does not have at its disposal a formulated feminist literary criticism, a great deal of research has been done in this direction abroad. This is especially the case in Europe and America. Feminist literary critics apply themselves to the representation of the woman in works by male authors and an analysis of feminine experience in the production of texts by women. This article is an exploration of the Anglo-American and French approaches in feminist literary criticism. An attempt is made to formulate the aims of a possible South African feminist literary criticism in order that not only the general norms, but also the feminist codes in the production of a text, speak towards the final interpretation of a work.
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Carter, Vednita. "Providing Services to African American Prostituted Women." Journal of Trauma Practice 2, no. 3-4 (January 14, 2004): 213–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/j189v02n03_12.
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Schaum, Melita. "H. L. Mencken and American Cultural Masculinism." Journal of American Studies 29, no. 3 (December 1995): 379–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002187580002243x.
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H. L. Mencken's antagonism to women's issues seems paradoxical in a man so committed to emancipation and the reexamination of conventional social roles — the very goals for which the women's movement was fighting during the early decades of the twentieth century. The apparent discord of Mencken's attacks on suffragettes, his deprecating depictions of womanhood, and his thinly veiled vilification of women as a source of cultural mediocrity have spurred critics to explain, reformulate, or deny Mencken's disturbing prejudice. Edward A. Martin quixotically suggests that Mencken only “posed as an antifeminist,” while Charles A. Fecher wonders why “today's advocates of ‘women's liberation’ have not resurrected In Defense of Women” — Mencken's lashing satire on the female in America, grossly misread by Fecher as a tribute to women's “intelligence.” But Mencken was not “posing” as an antifeminist any more than he was pretending to be anti-Philistine. His views of women were not only consistent with his own cultural philosophy but joined a paradigm of masculinism underlying the definition of American culture during these years.This essay does not deny Mencken's considerable contributions to the scene of American letters in the early twentieth century. Alarm at the recently published diaries — which illustrate Mencken's disposition to be “careless of the decencies” in his random remarks on African-Americans and Jews — while justified, often de-contextualizes his opinions from the wider cultural atmosphere. Regarding his views on women as well, I argue that metaphoric and broadly philosophical foundations place many of his views within a larger climate of opinion seeking to link the rise of the feminine with intellectual mediocrity.
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Nobles, Wade W., Lawford L. Goddard, and Dorie J. Gilbert. "Culturecology, Women, and African-Centered HIV Prevention." Journal of Black Psychology 35, no. 2 (February 9, 2009): 228–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0095798409333584.
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The Healer Women Fighting Disease Integrated Substance Abuse and HIV Prevention Program for African American women is based on a conceptual framework called “culturecology” and an African-Centered Behavioral Change Model (ACBCM). Culturecology poses that an understanding of African American culture is central to both behavior and behavioral transformation. The ACBCM model suggests that behavioral change occurs through a process of resocialization and culturalization. These processes minimize negative social conditions and maximize prosocial and life-affirming conditions. The participants were 149 women—105 in the intervention group and 44 in the comparison group. Findings show significant changes among participants from pretest to posttest in (1) increasing motivation and decreasing depression (cultural realignment ), (2) increasing HIV/AIDS knowledge and self-worth (cognitive restructuring ), and (3) adopting less risky sexual practices (character development ). The African-centered approach demonstrates promise as a critical component in reducing and/or eliminating health disparities in the African American community.
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Ngwaba, Ijeoma Ann, Olutola Akinwumi, Segun Larayetan, and Chiemela Imelda Ibeku. "A Critical Discourse on Self Discovery in Alice Walker’s Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 14, no. 5 (May 29, 2024): 1291–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1405.01.
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Alice Walker and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are renowned female writers from different backgrounds, countries and as such, different ideologies. They share a lot in common as their novels revolve around women, their struggles, challenges and experiences in life. Alice Walker concentrates on African-American women while Adichie focuses on the experiences of Africans, especially women who left the shores of Africa to the western world, their struggles, challenges encountered for being black and being a woman which Bell Hooks regards as “double tragedy”. This study is a comparative analysis of the self discovery in their novels: Now is the time to open your Heart by Alice Walker and Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie. It examines how the female protagonists: Kate and Ifemelu re-discover themselves and carve out a niche for themselves despite the challenges they face in their various journey in life. This study attempts to disabuse the minds of those who believe that women should be regarded as objects to be played with; rather they are subjects as could be ascertained from the lives of the characters, especially, the protagonists. Effort will be made to examine their pitiable experience which ranges from racism, segregation, humiliation and exploitation. Womanist and Post-colonial theories have been employed in this study to ostensibly facilitate a link between the experiences of Africans in Diaspora and the American system of government.
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Rabinovitch-Fox, Einav. "Fabricating black modernity: Fashion and African American womanhood during the first great migration." International Journal of Fashion Studies 6, no. 2 (October 1, 2019): 239–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/infs_00007_1.
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The early twentieth century was a time of great influx in America. Shifting demographics in the 1910s and 1920s, most notably the migration of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to the urban centres of the North, opened economic and leisure possibilities that provided new spaces to define black modernity and its role in shaping American identity. Debates over black women’s bodies, clothing, hair, and general appearance stood at the centre of public attention and political discourse over gender and race equality, forming a realm where African Americans could challenge white racist stereotypes regarding black femininity and beauty, as well as a means through which they could claim new freedoms and achieve economic mobility. Middle-class reformers, young black migrants, as well as new role models such as female performers and blues singers, all used dress and appearance to redefine notions of beauty, respectability and freedom on their own terms. For these women, fashions became intertwined with questions of racial progress and inclusion in American society, offering a way to lay claims for equal citizenship that moved beyond individual expressions and preferences. This article highlights the place of fashion as a critical political realm for African Americans, who were often barred from access to formal routes of power in the era of Jim Crow. Shifting the perspective beyond official forms of civil rights activism, it argues that fashion enabled black women to carve new positions of power from which they could actively participate in gender and racial politics, demanding their equal place in American society.
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Lethbridge, Dona J. "Fertility Management in Taiwanese and African-American Women." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 24, no. 5 (June 1995): 459–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1552-6909.1995.tb02503.x.
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Lewallen, Lynne Porter, and Darlene J. Street. "Initiating and Sustaining Breastfeeding in African American Women." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 39, no. 6 (November 2010): 667–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1552-6909.2010.01196.x.
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Sapozhnikova, Yulia L. "Dark-Skinned Servants Through the Eyes of a White Author: a case study of K. Stockett’s Novel “The Help”." Observatory of Culture 17, no. 3 (August 6, 2020): 306–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.25281/2072-3156-2020-17-3-306-318.
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If white authors speak on behalf of dark-skinned characters in their texts, African-American critics and writers often accuse them of attempting cultural appropriation. In this case, according to African-Americans, white people describe them only stereotypically and thus deprive them of a voice. Despite this, such attempts continue. In 2009, K. Stockett released her novel “The Help”, which is narrated by three women, including two dark-skinned maids (Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson). These characters tell about their experiences working for white masters in the early 1960s, in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, during a time of severe racial segregation. Newly arising after every release of such literary or film texts (just remember the recent film “Green book”), the ongoing controversy over cultural appropriation determines the relevance of addressing this topic. K. Stockett presents these characters as anti-racism fighters, with the word as their main weapon. Minny bluntly tells her employers what she thinks of them, which is in line with how African-American authors describe in their texts a way of speaking boldly to those you obey, called “to sass”. On the other hand, Aibileen tries not to show her attitude to white people and, in conversations with them, encodes the true content of her statements as much as possible, in fact using the practice of “signifying”, also characteristic of African-American culture: persuading other maids to tell a white girl about the relationship between masters and servants in their city, in order for it to be published. She deems the written preservation of an ethnic group history as a way to fight against racism. The author comes to the conclusion that K. Stockett follows, consciously or not, the traditions of African-American literature, in which many dark-skinned characters appear as tricksters.
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Chauhan, Parul. "Black women’s quest for identity: A critical Study of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun." International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 8, no. 1 (2023): 189–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.81.22.
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Tracing the history of black feminism, it becomes evident that the social construction of racism, sexism and classism was the driving force behind the widespread violence and discrimination against black women. They are found searching and struggling to attain their identity in this patriarchal world. Black feminist thought leads to certain ideas that clarify a standpoint of and for black women. Black feminist perspectives focus on the social domination on the basis of gender, race and class oppression. These oppressions are densely interwoven into social structures and work collectively to define the history of the lives of Black women in America and other coloured women worldwide. It takes us back to the era of United States slavery during which period, a societal hierarchy was established, according to which White men were supposed to be at the top, White women next, followed by Black men and finally, at the bottom were placed Black women. Black feminists were critical of the view that suggests that black women must identify as either black or women. The present paper looks at Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun from a black feminist viewpoint. It discusses position of a woman in male dominated society and her struggle for identity. It unfolds the saga of suffering and silencing of a black woman, which pervades the black women writings. It is depicted that black women have to face the unique challenging task of fighting for black liberation and gender equality simultaneously. The play effectively unthreads the history of African American women’s lives and their quest for identity in African American society. Issues of masculinity and femininity are deeply woven in this play. Women in this play present a microcosm of society; they are treated as second class citizens in society. Hansberry has depicted through her play the superiority that men pose over women. The glimpse of patriarchal dominance is visible throughout the play through different male characters. It further focuses on the value of the individual women’s identity and women’s right and freedom to construct their own separate identities rather than having them imposed against their wishes. It delineates how African American Women try to speak out against oppression and create a sense of individual identity in the face of silence and absence.
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Durham, Aisha S. "Behind Beats and Rhymes: Working Class from a Hampton Roads Hip Hop Homeplace." Policy Futures in Education 7, no. 2 (January 1, 2009): 217–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2009.7.2.217.
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The film documentary titled Hip Hop: beyond beats and rhymes captures ongoing conversations among scholars, cultural critics, and hip hop insiders about the state of African Americans by interrogating distinct expressive forms associated with hip hop culture. Durham draws from two scenes to describe her memories as the researched underclass and as the graduate researcher returning to her childhood public housing community to explore the shifting discursive terrain of hip hop as a struggle over meaning waged through class performances. Class is articulated through taste values and notions of respectability. Durham connects the hip hop mantra emphasizing lived, embodied culture with bell hooks' description of a homeplace to recount her researcher/ed self during the Virginia Beach Greekfest race riots and her visit home where she talks about hip hop feminism with a group of African American women from the Norfolk public housing community. By recalling autoethnographic encounters of hip hop at home, Durham calls attention to the politics of class that echoes behind beats and rhymes.
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Thuesen, Peter J. "The “African Enslavement of Anglo-Saxon Minds”: The Beechers as Critics of Augustine." Church History 72, no. 3 (September 2003): 569–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640700100368.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe, who achieved international fame for her 1852 antislavery novel,Uncle Tom's Cabin, is best known to historians of American religious thought as a critic of New England Calvinism and its leading light, Jonathan Edwards. But in airing her frustrations with the Puritan tradition, Stowe also singled out a much earlier source of the problem: Augustine, the fifth-century bishop of Hippo. At his worst, Augustine typified for Stowe not only theological rigidity but also the obdurate refusal of the male system-builders to take women's perspectives seriously. Consequently, in the New England of the early republic, when “the theology of Augustine began to be freely discussed by every individual in society, it was the women who found it hardest to tolerate or assimilate it.” In leveling such criticism, Stowe echoed her elder sister Catharine Beecher, a prominent educator and social reformer, whose well-known writings on the role of women in the home have often overshadowed her two companion volumes of theology, in which she devotes more attention to Augustine than to any other figure. Yet for all her extended critiques of Augustinian themes, Beecher buried her most provocative rhetorical flourish, as one might conceal a dagger, in the last endnote on the last page of the second volume. Seizing upon the African context of Augustine's career as a metaphor for his deleterious influence on Christian theology, she concluded that reasonable people have a duty to resist the “African enslavement of Anglo-Saxon minds” no less than to combat the “Anglo-Saxon enslavement of African bodies.”
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Hbean, Hussein, and Ikhlas Al-Abedi. "Vulnerability and Hypocrisy in Suzan Lori Parks' In The Blood." Uruk Journal 15, no. 3-P1 (September 22, 2022): 1648–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.52113/uj05/022-15/1648-1654.
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Black women's struggles for authority and identity are underreported not only within the political and social living days of the territory black females call home (for example, dark skin females), yet also in critical and creative literary works. Suzan-Lori Parks [1963-] – for her willingness to bring authority to black females who really are silenced. In her work, she attempted to demonstrate how racial identity, privilege, and sex all play a role in black female's oppression in United states. Because they are black, poor, and women, the [female] main characters in her work seem to be victims. Suzan-Lori Parks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who is bold and untraditional. She is part of a larger line of African American playwrights who have made a significant contribution to African Americans' quest/ion – for identities. Her drama are places where she highlights the importance of restructuring African Americans' identities by challenging dominant ideologies and metanarratives, invalidating some of the prejudices forced on them, exposing the press's duplicity in reinforcing racial prejudice, engendering enslavement, lynching, and their aftermaths, rehistoricizing history, catalyzing reflections on the numerous intersections of physical intimacy, racial group, category, and sex role sexualities, and profess. The search for one's identity has been a contentious topic in African American literature since its inception. Dark skin playwrights have made considerable efforts in the drama to emphasize the worth, significance, and self respect of African American women identities by combating racism and its harmful impacts on African Americans' lives and relationships.
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Shrivastava, Dr Ku Richa. "Black Feminism as a Literary Tradition." SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 7, no. 8 (July 27, 2019): 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v7i8.9277.
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The research paper posits to detail the black literary tradition.When the American art is viewed as a whole, the contribution of blacks is found in a miniature fraction, if we exclude their folk tradition of melody and dances. Merely, three generations have been passed of blacks’ early years. The black literary tradition has immediately passed its immaturity. At first, the silent era subsequent to slavery has existed. Folk tales and music inform readers about these black writers and artists who have lived and died. African - American literature has propagated the fact that blacks have been repressed. They resisted against relentless repression. After reconstruction period black lips became verbal. This new black man took two to three generations to expand his inspirations and contemplations to correspond to his own sentiments. Those black male authors have no evidence to converse for blacks who took three quarters of a century (75 years) to visible them in a literary tradition.
Black women voices have been suppressed in context of black women’s literature and black cultural tradition. African - American women have been excluded from western writings in historical period. Both African American men and White men have denied African - American women a platform in literary tradition. Reading text has influenced African - American women to raise voice against racism. The institutional practices of racism by white patriarchal power structure have rebuffed to acknowledge black women historically. The racism and gender oppression practiced against black women persuaded them to write with reference to the perspectives of black women. After 1960’s, the black writings flourished. In Reading Black Reading Feminist a Critical Anthology (1990) edited by Henry Louis Gates, states expression of Anna Julia Cooper. She lays emphasis on recognition of black women literary tradition was in need to claim authority. Since 1970, with the publication of literary artifacts of African tradition, black women have come in the vanguard of African - American literary tradition. Several Black women writers works are studied and intertwined into a literary tradition like, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara Christian, Alice Walker, Patricia Hills Collins, Bell Hooks and Angela Y. Davis. Social animosities have been made between black women and black men with black women’s success of literary tradition and black men sexism towards them.
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Klassen, Pamela E. "The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 14, no. 1 (2004): 39–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2004.14.1.39.
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AbstractScholars of American religion are increasingly attentive to material culture as a rich source for the analysis of religious identity and practice that is especially revealing of the relationships among doctrine, bodily comportment, social structures, and innovation. In line with this focus, this article analyses the ways nineteenth-century African American Methodist women turned to dress as a tool to communicate religious and political messages. Though other nineteenth-century Protestants also made use of the communicative powers of dress, African American women did so with a keen awareness of the ways race trumped clothing in the semiotic system of nineteenth-century America. Especially for women entering into public fora as preachers and public speakers, dress could act as a passport to legitimacy in an often hostile setting, but it was not always enough to establish oneself as a Christian lady. Considering the related traditions of plain dress and respectability within the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, this essay finds that AME women cultivated respectability and plainness within discourses of authenticity that tried—with some ambivalence—to use dress as a marker of the true soul beneath the fabric. Based primarily on the autobiographical and journalistic writings of women such as Jarena Lee, Amanda Berry Smith, Hallie Q. Brown, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, as well as accounts from AME publications such as the Christian Recorder and the Church Review, and other church documents, the essay also draws on the work of historians of African American women and historians of dress and material culture. For nineteenth-century AME women, discourses of authenticity could be both a burden and a resource, but either way they were discourses that were often remarkably critical, both of selfmotivation and of cultural markers of class, race, and gender in a world that made a fetish of whiteness.
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Newman, Richard. "Early Black Thought Leaders and the Reframing of American Intellectual History." Journal of the Early Republic 43, no. 4 (December 2023): 631–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a915166.
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Abstract: This essay examines the broad impact of African American thought leadership on early American intellectual history. Though marginalized in many mainstream histories of American intellectual life–which often focus on the emergence of Black philosophers and Black professional historians later in the 19th century -- early national Black thinkers helped shape public understanding of critical ideas in American society and politics, including the meaning of citizenship and civil rights, emancipation and equality, and racial justice. African Americans also influenced public discourses on other key topics in American intellectual life, including the nature of human dignity and spiritual redemption in the Second Great Awakening, the meaning of Romanticism and Transcendentalism in American reform culture, and the authority of science and technology in antebellum society. Using the concept of thought leadership as a framing device to understand the power and impact of early Black ideas, I follow recent trends in the field of African American intellectual history that focus on that way that African American men and women became public authorities on key ideas and issues in American culture between the American Revolution and Civil War. Though they did not often occupy positions of educational, institutional, or legal power (the main provinces of intellectual leadership), Black thought leaders had a significant impact on early American intellectual history.
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Lakshmi, K. Srividya. "Alice Walker’s Perspective of Empowerment of Black Women as Revealed in her Novel “The Third Life of Grange Copeland”." SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 8, no. 5 (May 28, 2020): 51. http://dx.doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v8i5.10581.
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Alice Walker is a Black American novelist, essayist, short story writer, poetic, critic, biographer, editor and Pulitzer Prize laureate. Alice Walker captures the experience of Black women in her works as a series of movements from women who are victimized by the society to women who have taken control of their lives consciously. She has explored the lives of Black women in depth even questions their fate. She has courage to see through the seeds of time and declares that in future black women would no longer live in suspension. “The Third Life of Grange Copeland” (1970) was the first novel of Alice Walker. The focus is on Black women characters in The Third Life who empower themselves through education and economic independence. This novel introduces the domination of powerless women by equally powerless men. The novel challenges African Americans to take a scrutinizing look at them. Mary Margaret Richards observes that “The Oldest generation represented by Grange finds itself trapped in a share cropper system… a form of slavery (African –American Writers, p.744). The novel introduces many of her prevalent themes, particularly the domination of powerless women by equally powerless men.
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Cannon, Clare, Regardt J. Ferreira, and Fred Buttell. "Critical Race Theory, Parenting, and Intimate Partner Violence: Analyzing Race and Gender." Research on Social Work Practice 30, no. 1 (April 29, 2018): 122–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731518772151.
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Purpose: This study sought to investigate similarities and differences among race, gender, parenting attitudes, and conflict negotiation tactics of perpetrators of intimate partner violence in a batterer intervention program. Method: This research utilized a nonequivalent, control group secondary analysis of 238 women and men. Results: Logistic regression indicated the following: (1) An increased likelihood for scoring higher on the Conflict Tactics Scale-2 (CTS-2), Physical Assault subscale, and high-risk Adult–Adolescent Parenting Inventory-2 (AAPI-2) parenting group for those in the African American category compared to the White category; (2) African American women are more likely to be unemployed, score higher on the CTS-2 Physical Assault subscale, and in the high-risk AAPI-2 parenting group than African American men; and (3) White women, compared to White men, are more likely to experience injury and to score in the high-risk AAPI-2 group. Conclusions: Critical race theory provides a necessary understanding of these findings within structural inequality in the United States. Further results and implications are discussed.
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Hebert, Kirsten L. "Optometry at the Intersection of Gender, Race and Class in the Early Twentieth Century." Hindsight: Journal of Optometry History 51, no. 2 (April 24, 2020): 37–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.14434/hindsight.v51i2.30279.
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This biographical study of Dr. Bess Francis Coleman profiles the experience of an African American woman in the early twentieth century, employing a critical lens to explore how race, gender and class shaped her life and career, and the methodology of microhistory to draw out the ways in which her life exemplifies and signifies the essential work of African American women professionals during this era. Dr. Bess “Bessie” Anderson Francis Coleman (1893-1967) was the first documented African American woman licensed to practice optometry in the United States. A native of Kentucky, Dr. Coleman’s first career was as a schoolteacher in her native Harrodsburg. In 1923, she married pharmacist John B. Coleman, Jr. The Colemans moved to West Palm Beach, Florida in 1923, and then Chicago, Illinois in 1925 where they opened a chain of pharmacies in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Dr. Coleman received her training at the Northern Illinois College of Optometry from 1932-1934. In 1935, she moved back to Kentucky with her son, where she cared for her elderly parents and opened the only optometry practice in Lexington’s Brucetown neighborhood, well-known for its African American physicians. In 1942, she retired to Denver, Colorado’s African American enclave, Whittier. She died in 1967 and was buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery in her hometown.
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Knox-Kazimierczuk, Francoise, Karly Geller, Sherrill Sellers, Denise Taliaferro Baszile, and Meredith Smith-Shockley. "African American Women and Obesity Through the Prism of Race." Health Education & Behavior 45, no. 3 (August 30, 2017): 371–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1090198117721610.
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Background. There are minimal studies focusing on African American women and obesity, and there are even fewer studies examining obesity through a critical race theoretical framework. African American obesity research has largely focused on individual and community interventions, which have not been sufficient to reverse the obesity epidemic. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between race and body mass index (BMI) for African American women. Method. Previously collected data from the National Survey of American Life Self-Administered Questionnaire, 2001-2003 (NSAL-SAQ) was analyzed for this study. The NSAL-SAQ dedicated a section to the exploration of group and personal identity, along with having anthropometric data and health habit questions to be able to conduct analyses for associations between the racial identity dimensions and obesity. Results. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the constructs of racial identity on BMI comparing standardized coefficients (β) and R2adj values. Results indicated participants ascribing more to the stereotype of “Blacks giving up easily” (β = 0.527, p = .000) showed an increased BMI. Additionally, the negative stereotype of “Blacks being violent” (β = 0.663, p = .000) and “Blacks being lazy” (β = 0.506, p = .001) was associated with an increased BMI. Conclusions. Based on these finds high negative racial regard is associated with increased weight. This study contributes uniquely to the scientific literature, focusing on the construct of racial identity and obesity in African American women.
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Pierre, Yvette. "Rooted Pedagogies: Black Women Activist Teachers Planting Seeds." European Scientific Journal, ESJ 14, no. 19 (July 31, 2018): 36. http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2018.v14n19p36.
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The history of activism on the part of African American women has laid the foundation on which contemporary African American women activists and scholars have developed theories, critiques, and cultural frameworks that challenges pre- established paradigms and epistemologies. This paper focuses on extending the research that begun on African American teacher activists to gain sufficient insight into their political perspectives and how their perspectives were manifested in their personal and professional lives to influence their role as a teacher. This study was informed by black feminist epistemology and it employs portraiture as its research methodology. Data analysis yielded significant findings. The subjects of the study considered those life experiences to be most significant that contributed in developing their critical consciousness as children through the influence of their family, school, and community. Each teacher pointed to the need to teach critical thinking skills so that students of color will be able to establish their places in the world as productive citizens. The pedagogical approaches of the black women activist teachers were theorized and it emerged as a model of Rooted Pedagogies grounded in the historical tradition of black women’s activism. Furthermore, the implications for teacher education and practice were discussed, alongside with the recommendations for future research.
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Denyse, Tammie, Kimberly J. Martin, Yrvane K. Pageot, Denise de Luz, Praise Owoyemi, Annette L. Stanton, and Jacqueline H. Kim. "Abstract P6-05-46: Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities): A qualitative study of the Strong Black Woman schema in the breast cancer context." Cancer Research 83, no. 5_Supplement (March 1, 2023): P6–05–46—P6–05–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.sabcs22-p6-05-46.
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Abstract Background: Marked disparities exist for African American women, relative to non-Latina white women, in the five-year survival rate for breast cancer. Black women breast cancer survivors also demonstrate relative disadvantage in specific quality of life (QOL) domains, persisting through at least two years after diagnosis. Although Black women have higher QOL in the spiritual domain relative to white women, disparities include lower physical QOL, as well as more pronounced depressive symptoms, perceived stress, fear of dying, unmet supportive care needs, and financial distress, with younger Black women (< 50 years) particularly at risk. African American breast cancer survivors also report receiving too little information from their oncologists during diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care. Sociodemographic and medical factors only partially explain the QOL disparities. The goal of Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities), a community-academic partnership, is to interrogate the potential relevance of the Strong Black Woman (or Black Superwoman) schema in the breast cancer context. The schema involves historically grounded expectations to prioritize caregiving over self-care, suppress emotions, present an image of strength, decline support, and strive to achieve success without adequate resources. Method: Black women were recruited via relevant email listservs and flyers distributed at local breast cancer events to take part in a study “to understand the unique experiences of African American women and their views on the Strong Black Woman concept as it applies during their breast cancer experience.” Eligibility criteria were self-identification as being: 1) an African American woman (or a Black woman living in the United States); 2) diagnosed with breast cancer (any stage, any diagnosis duration); 3) at least 21 years old; and 4) able to communicate in English. Three Gatherings (i.e., culturally curated focus groups) were held as half-day experiences in intimate settings (e.g., private homes, a church) in three California cities (Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles). Gatherings provided an entirely Black women’s space to discuss the breast cancer experience and the relevance and consequences of the Strong Black Woman schema, break bread together, and engage in an inspiring activity. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted on the Gatherings transcripts with a critical realist, contextualist approach. Results: All participants (N = 37; age range = 30-94 years; M = 59 years) had heard of the concept of the Strong Black Woman. Reflexive thematic analysis yielded six themes: 1) historical legacy of Strong Black Woman; 2) navigating intersecting Strong Black Woman identities; 3) everyday challenges encountered on the battlefield by Strong Black Women; 4) Strong Black Woman in action during the breast cancer journey; 5) the complexities of seeking and accepting support; and 6) the liberated Strong Black Woman. Participants linked both negative and positive consequences with the Strong Black Woman schema. Negative consequences included the oncologic team and others expecting them to be strong and not to need support, as well as expectations of themselves to suppress emotions and to continue caring for others to the neglect of caring for themselves. Positive consequences included engaging in self-advocacy in the oncologic context, having a sense of resilience, and redefining strength to include expressing emotions and accepting help from others. Conclusion: Qualitative analysis revealed the relevance of the Strong Black Woman schema in the breast cancer context, as well as its negative and positive consequences. Future research can assess whether oncologic professionals’ awareness of the schema is useful in ensuring they offer support and refer Black women diagnosed with breast cancer to culturally relevant supportive resources. Citation Format: Tammie Denyse, Kimberly J. Martin, Yrvane K. Pageot, Praise Owoyemi, Annette L. Stanton, Jacqueline H. Kim. Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities): A qualitative study of the Strong Black Woman schema in the breast cancer context [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr P6-05-46.
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Brown, Letisha Engracia Cardoso. "“If You're Black, Get Back!” The Color Complex: Issues of Skin-Tone Bias in the Workplace." Ethnic Studies Review 32, no. 2 (January 1, 2009): 120–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/esr.2009.32.2.120.
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Skin-tone has always played a role in the socioeconomic lives of African-Americans, and while there are always successes, there are also those who are not as fortunate. A major success for African Americans has come in the shape of the election of the nation's first AfricanAmerican President, Barack Obama, and, by extension, the first African-American First Lady, Michelle Obama. Among the cries of happiness and hope after the election, there lingers a feeling among many Americans whether Barack Obama would have been elected if he were darker rather than lighter skinned. Though the question is rhetorical at this point the question is nevertheless one asked in many American households. Even after the election and inauguration of the first Black President and the subsequent entrance of the first Black Family into the White House, many critics wonder whether the United States is still a nation absorbed in skin-tone prejudices or has, in the words of the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., truly “overcome” them. With such a question in mind, the position of the First Lady becomes a precarious one. While she is not principally responsible for guiding the fate of the nation, her role is a visible one, which makes her presence in the public eye an important one nonetheless. Historically, the First Lady is expected to embody ideals of womanhood such as virtue, beauty, grace, and honor to the nation at large. Up until this point, these ideals have been expressed to young women in this nation as coterminous with the concept of “whiteness.” More pointedly, will images of beauty shift away from narrow Eurocentric standards because a Black First Family resides in the White House?
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Garza, Rose Hennessy, Michelle Y. Williams, Shana O. Ntiri, Michelle DeCoux Hampton, and Alice F. Yan. "Intersectionality Impacts Survivorship: Identity-Informed Recommendations to Improve the Quality of Life of African American Breast Cancer Survivors in Health Promotion Programming." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 19 (October 6, 2022): 12807. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912807.
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(1) Background: African American women breast cancer survivors face unique experiences that impact their quality of life as they transition beyond treatments. Experiences may be complicated by living at the intersection of systemically oppressed identities, including gender, race, social class, and cancer-related disability. Using the Black Feminist Thought (BFT) framework and the PEN-3 cultural model, this qualitative study sought to: (a) understand African American women breast cancer survivors’ lived experiences; (b) examine how the multiple intersecting factors of race, gender, social class/socioeconomic status, and cancer-related disability impact their quality of life; and (c) inform future health promotion programming that is culturally relevant to AAWBCS to improve their quality of life. (2) Methods: Seven focus groups were conducted with 30 African American breast cancer survivors in a Midwestern metropolitan region. Focus groups were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Framework analyses were conducted to identify themes with NVivo qualitative analysis software. (3) Results: Four themes emerged: (a) caregiving roles provide both support and challenges for survivors, (b) the “strong Black woman” is inherent in survivor experiences, (c) intersectionality impacts survivorship, and (d) African American women resist oppression through culturally specific supports and advocacy. (4) Conclusions: The intervention point of entry should be at the peer support group level and centered on family and provide community-based support and services. Future research should move upstream to address social determinants of health, including racism, sexism, and ableism; there is a critical need to discuss how structural racism affects health care and develop interventions to address racial discrimination and racial bias in health care.
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Dubbin, Leslie, Monica McLemore, and Janet K. Shim. "Illness Narratives of African Americans Living With Coronary Heart Disease." Qualitative Health Research 27, no. 4 (July 9, 2016): 497–508. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732316645319.
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How African American men and women respond to and manage living with coronary heart disease (CHD) is not well understood despite the well-documented disproportionate burden of CHD and its complications among African Americans in the United States. Through a critical interactionist perspective, we explore illness experiences of African Americans living with CHD and describe a broad range of micro-, meso-, and macro-contextual factors that influence their illness experiences. For participants in this study, CHD has become a “Black disease” wherein certain bodies have become historically and racially marked; a conceptualization maintained and passed on by African Americans themselves. Such findings highlight that CHD is more than a “lifestyle disease” where high-risk behaviors and lack of healthy choices are ultimate culprits. Rather, CHD is perceived by African Americans who have it as yet another product of ongoing racial and socio-structural dynamics through which their health burdens are created, sustained, and reproduced.
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Stringer, Marilyn, Susan Gennaro, Janet A. Deatrick, and Sandra Founds. "Symptoms Described by African American Women Evaluated for Preterm Labor." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 37, no. 2 (March 2008): 196–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1552-6909.2008.00230.x.
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Giurgescu, Carmen, Karen Kavanaugh, Kathleen F. Norr, Barbara L. Dancy, Naomi Twigg, Barbara L. McFarlin, Christopher G. Engeland, Mary Dawn Hennessy, and Rosemary C. White-Traut. "Stressors, Resources, and Stress Responses in Pregnant African American Women." Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing 27, no. 1 (2013): 81–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/jpn.0b013e31828363c3.
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Lanehart, Sonja L. "Say my name." Gender and Language 15, no. 4 (December 23, 2021): 559–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.21523.
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This essay is a call out and a roll call of Black women scholars – Black Feminists, Critical Race Theorists, Intersectionality Theorists and co-conspirators – doing the work of the elder women and ancestors whose shoulders we stand on. I frame the research on African American Women’s Language around Hull, Bell-Scott and Smith’s (1982) seminal book All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave to shout out not only how language and linguistics researchers got it twisted and need to reckon with truth and say my (language’s) name: African American Women’s Language. And put some respeck on it while you’re at it.
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Garrido, Felipe Espinoza. "‘Ingratitude! Treachery! Revenge!’: Race, Empire, and Mutinous Femininities in Harriette Gordon Smythies’ A Faithful Woman (1865)." Victoriographies 12, no. 3 (November 2022): 243–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/vic.2022.0469.
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Harriette Gordon Smythies’ overlooked sensation novel A Faithful Woman (1865) engages with two cultural formations instrumental in shaping the Victorians’ representations of race, and to a large degree, also their understanding of it: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 and minstrelsy. As its various symbolic appropriations of mutinous women show, the novel is highly critical of the easy and essentialising recriminations of ‘vile’ Indianness and offers a keen appreciation of the parallels between the Empire’s racialising oppressions abroad and its gendered oppressions at home. At the same time, however, its representations of African American characters seek to enshrine Britain’s moral superiority vis-à-vis the United States’ slavery system. Particularly, A Faithful Woman’s examinations of racialised imaginations of Indian Britons and African Americans – contrasting, for instance, British sculpture and portraiture with (allegedly) American minstrelsy – speak to its attempt to dissociate the practices of Empire from its former colonies across the Atlantic. Its critical examination of imperial notions of race in post-Rebellion sensation fiction, this article argues, helps to reaffirm the very colonial practices that it seeks to undermine.
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Harrison, Tracie, David L. Kahn, and Mutsu Hsu. "A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study of Widowhood for African-American Women." OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying 50, no. 2 (March 2005): 131–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/u122-9k12-3clm-aj9w.
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There is a dearth of bereavement and healthcare literature on the experience of widowhood for African-American women. This hermeneutic phenomenological study of 11 African-American widows used demographic questions, field notes, and in-depth interviews to understand their experience. The physical loss of the marital bond and the psychological growth toward increased independence was examined within the context of the widows' relationships with their deceased spouses, families, churches, and friends. Their experiences were contextualized within the meaning structure provided by their faith and interpreted based upon descriptions of their cultural and historical context. From the analysis, four themes emerged: Defining Needs and Relaxing Boundaries, Releasing the Sadness and Keeping Busy, Being Together, and Going on Alone.
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Alexander, Patrick Elliot. ""Visions Again Came To Me of My African Ancestors Bound and Dragged onto Slave Ships": From Political Autobiography to Burton's Post-Black Power Neo-Abolitionist Memoir." College Literature 51, no. 2 (March 2024): 139–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lit.2024.a924341.
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Abstract: This article builds upon African American literary theorist Margo Perkins's conception of political autobiography from her award-winning book Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties , and the work of critical prison studies scholars Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodríguez. It reads Susan Burton's 2017 narrative, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women , as reflecting an untheorized subgenre of African American confinement literature: the post-Black Power neo-abolitionist memoir. In the memoir, Burton alludes to slavery and anti-slavery activism to contextualize historically the post-Black Power-era prison-industrial complex and galvanize opposition to it.
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Griffith, Derek M., Andrea King, and Julie Ober Allen. "Male Peer Influence on African American Men’s Motivation for Physical Activity." American Journal of Men's Health 7, no. 2 (November 15, 2012): 169–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1557988312465887.
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Thematic analysis of data from nine exploratory focus groups conducted with 71 middle-aged and older African American men and eight focus groups with 77 key women in their lives revealed how social norms and modeling of physical activity influenced men’s motivation to exercise. Both men and women identified male peers as an important source of ideas, encouragement, and support to initiate and sustain physical activity, yet sedentary peers also could contribute to men being less motivated to be active. The primary difference in men’s and women’s perspectives was that men attributed their decline in activity levels to difficulties in finding time for physical activity, whereas women attributed sedentary lifestyles to an increase in men’s physical illnesses and ailments. Men’s participation in team sports and overall activity levels diminished with age. Peer social support can be critical for interventions to help African American men engage in and sustain physical activity.
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Smith, Anna Marie. "Critical Dialogue." Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 4 (November 13, 2008): 811–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1537592708081954.
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In her timely and provocative book, Kathleen Arnold examines the super-exploitation and disenfranchisement of the “new working class”—low-income immigrants, African Americans, and women workers—and utilizes these phenomena as a catalyst for sharpening our critical understanding of American governance in our globalizing conditions. She contends that the neoliberal state is deploying deregulation and massive policing interventions simultaneously. The latter range from the exposure of welfare mothers to the rigors of workfare to the war on drugs, post-9/11 domestic security operations, mean-spirited attacks on the homeless, and the crackdown on illegal immigration. Arnold proposes a sobering diagnosis that is loosely based upon Giorgio Agamben's theory of bare life: As the state operates outside the law on a frequent and even systematic basis to reduce these target groups to a subhuman status, we are witnessing the triumph of prerogative power in American society today.
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Drenkard, Cristina, Kirk Easley, Gaobin Bao, Charmayne Dunlop-Thomas, S. Sam Lim, and Teresa Brady. "Overcoming barriers to recruitment and retention of African–American women with SLE in behavioural interventions: lessons learnt from the WELL study." Lupus Science & Medicine 7, no. 1 (June 2020): e000391. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/lupus-2020-000391.
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BackgroundAfrican–Americans are historically under-represented in SLE studies and engaging them in behavioural interventions is challenging. The Women Empowered to Live with Lupus (WELL) study is a trial conducted to examine the effectiveness of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) among African–American women with SLE. We describe enrolment and retention challenges and successful strategies of the WELL study.MethodsThe Georgians Organized Against Lupus (GOAL) cohort, a population-based cohort established in Atlanta, Georgia, was used to enrol a sample of 168 African–American women with SLE into the CDSMP. The CDSMP is a 6-week, group-based programme led by peers to enhance self-management skills in people with chronic conditions. Study performance standards were predefined and close monitoring of recruitment and retention progress was conducted by culturally competent staff members. Continuous contact with participants, research coordinators’ notes and regular research team meetings served to assess barriers and define strategies needed to meet the desired recruitment and retention outcomes.ResultsWhile no substantial barriers were identified to enrol GOAL participants into the WELL study, WELL participants faced difficulties registering for and/or completing (attending ≥4 sessions) a CDSMP workshop. Major barriers were unpredicted personal and health-related issues, misunderstanding of the scope and benefits of the intervention, and transportation problems. Early implementation of tailored strategies (eg, CDSMP scheduled on Saturdays, CDSMP delivered at convenient/familiar facilities, transportation services) helped to reduce participant barriers and achieve a CDSMP registration of 168 participants, with 126 (75%) completers. Frequent contact with participants and compensation helped to reach 92.3% retention for the 6-month survey.ConclusionsPredefined standards and monitoring of participant barriers by a culturally competent research team and proactive solutions were critical to implementing successful strategies and achieving the desired recruitment and retention outcomes of a behavioural trial involving African–American women with SLE.Trial registration numberNCT02988661.
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Bertrand, Desiree. "Contraceptive Use Among African Caribbean and African American Women With a History of Intimate Partner Violence." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 49, no. 6 (November 2020): S3—S4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jogn.2020.09.008.
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Stolley, Melinda, Patricia Sheean, Ben Gerber, Claudia Arroyo, Linda Schiffer, Anjishnu Banerjee, Alexis Visotcky, et al. "Efficacy of a Weight Loss Intervention for African American Breast Cancer Survivors." Journal of Clinical Oncology 35, no. 24 (August 20, 2017): 2820–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1200/jco.2016.71.9856.
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Purpose African American women with breast cancer have higher cancer-specific and overall mortality rates. Obesity is common among African American women and contributes to breast cancer progression and numerous chronic conditions. Weight loss interventions among breast cancer survivors positively affect weight, behavior, biomarkers, and psychosocial outcomes, yet few target African Americans. This article examines the effects of Moving Forward, a weight loss intervention for African American breast cancer survivors (AABCS) on weight, body composition, and behavior. Patients and Methods Early-stage (I-III) AABCS were randomly assigned to a 6-month interventionist-guided (n = 125) or self-guided (n = 121) weight loss program supporting behavioral changes to promote a 5% weight loss. Anthropometric, body composition, and behavioral data were collected at baseline, postintervention (6 months), and follow-up (12 months). Descriptive statistics and mixed models analyses assessed differences between groups over time. Results Mean (± standard deviation) age, and body mass index were 57.5 (± 10.1) years and 36.1 (± 6.2) kg/m2, respectively, and 82% had stage I or II breast cancer. Both groups lost weight. Mean and percentage of weight loss were greater in the guided versus self-guided group (at 6 months: 3.5 kg v 1.3kg; P < .001; 3.6% v 1.4%; P < .001, respectively; at 12 months: 2.7 kg v 1.6 kg; P < .05; 2.6% v 1.6%; P < .05, respectively); 44% in the guided group and 19% in the self-guided group met the 5% goal. Body composition and behavioral changes were also greater in the interventionist-guided group at both time points. Conclusion The study supports the efficacy of a community-based interventionist-guided weight loss program targeting AABCS. Although mean weight loss did not reach the targeted 5%, the mean loss of > 3% at 6 months is associated with improved health outcomes. Affordable, accessible health promotion programs represent a critical resource for AABCS.
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Hill, Alla M., Danielle L. Nunnery, Alice Ammerman, and Jigna M. Dharod. "Racial/Ethnic Differences in Diet Quality and Eating Habits Among WIC Pregnant Women: Implications for Policy and Practice." American Journal of Health Promotion 34, no. 2 (October 28, 2019): 169–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0890117119883584.
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Purpose: One of the major federal food assistance programs, the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), serves approximately 1.5 million low-income pregnant women per year; however, limited information is available on their dietary habits. This is critical because low-income women are at higher risk of gaining excess weight during pregnancy. Thus, the study objectives were to (1) determine the overall diet quality of WIC pregnant women and (2) examine diet quality and eating behaviors by race/ethnicity and other sociodemographics. Design: This was a cross-sectional study. Setting: One of the 3 WIC offices in a north-central county in North Carolina, USA. Sample: Pregnant women (n = 198) in the second trimester. Measures: Interviews included sociodemographics, food security, diet, and eating behaviors. Diet quality was assessed by the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) 2010 scores. Analysis: Descriptives, bivariate analysis, and multivariate analysis. Results: Average participant age was 26 years, and the mean HEI-2010 score was 56 of maximum score of 100. Specifically, African American women consumed significantly lower servings of whole grains (β = −1.71; 95% CI: −3.10 to −0.32; P < .05) and dairy (β = −1.42; 95% CI: −2.51 to −0.33; P < .05) compared with non-Hispanic white women. Hispanic women scored higher in daily intake of fruits (β = 0.98; 95% CI: 0.17-1.79; P < .05) and for consuming empty calories in moderation (β = 1.57; 95% CI: 0.06-3.09; P < .05). Frequency of intake of fast foods/outside meals was higher among African American women (57%, P = .025). Conclusion: Efforts are warranted to promote optimal nutrition among WIC pregnant women. Specifically, African American women are highly vulnerable to poor dietary habits during pregnancy. Further investigation of barriers/facilitators for healthy eating is necessary to address nutrition disparities among WIC pregnant women.