Full Description
Womanish Black Girls is a collection of essays written by varied black women who fill spaces within the academy, public schools, civic organizations, and religious institutions. These writings are critically reflective and illuminate autobiographical storied-lives. A major theme is the notion of womanish black girls/women resisting the familial and communal expectations of being seen, rather than heard. Consequently, these memories and lived stories name contradictions between "being told what to do or say" and "knowing and deciding for herself." Additional themes include womanism and feminism, male patriarchy, violence, cultural norms, positionality, spirituality, representation, survival, and schooling. While the aforementioned can revive painful images and feelings, the essays offer hope, joy, redemption, and the re-imagining of new ways of being in individual and communal spaces. An expectation is that middle school black girls, high school black girls, college/university black girls, and community black women view this work as seedlings for understanding resistance, claiming voice, and healing.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword: The Audacious Speech of the Captive Maternal Mute
Joy James
Introduction: Three Black Women Remembering Womanish Girls
Dianne Smith, Loyce Caruthers, and Shaunda Fowler
Part I:Silencing Voice and (In)Visibility as Black Girls/Women
1. Dare to Break the Silence: My Mother, Myself
Loyce Caruthers
2. My Voice: Loud, Strong, Resented, but Heard
Valerie G. Tucker
3. My Name Is NOT Pastor's Wife: A Liberating Journey from a Voiceless Self
Gloria T. Anderson
Part II: Sexuality, Slut-Shaming, and Speaking a Black Girl's/Woman's Mind
4. My Soul Looks Back and Wonders How I Got Over: A Womanish Black Girl Reclaiming Her Superpower
Shaunda Fowler
5. Crowning Queens and Shaming Sluts: Intersectionality Identification in the Mistress Stereotype
Devair Jeffries and Rhonda Baynes Jeffries
6. Breaking the Silence: Black Women's Experience with Abortion
Autumn B. Brown
7. Why I Am, Who I Am
P.V. with Loyce Caruthers
Part III: Womanism, Knowing, and Being Smart Black Girls/Women
8. Knowing Womanism: Memories, Love, Mama, and Me
Dianne Smith
9. Educated Black Women as Conscious Resisters: How Our Mother's Love Made a Way
Iesha Jackson and Trachette L. Jackson
Contributors
Index
