Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood

Marquita M. Gammage is associate professor in the Africana Studies Department at California State University, Northridge, USA. She was awarded the Best Scholarly Book Publication Award by the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement in 2016. Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers is assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, USA. She has published scholarly articles focusing on the role of women in African traditional societies and controlling images attached to Black womanhood.

• List of Tables and Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction, Marquita Gammage; Part I: Historical Conceptualizations; Historical Miseducation on Black Womanhood, Donnetrice Allison; Part II: Motherhood and Mother-Right under Question; The Virility of the Haitian Womb: The Biggest Threat to the Dominican Right, Daly Guilamo; “Black Women Are Genius!”: The Image of Celebrated Black Motherhood in Stand-Up Comedy?, Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers; Self-Perceptions and Strategies of Self-Determination among Black Women Student Parents on Campus, Sureshi M. Jayawardene and Serie McDougal III; Part III: Media, Literature and Public Perceptions of Black Womanhood; Exploring Contemporary Stereotypes of Black Womanhood in Claudia Rankine’s ‘Citizen: An American Lyric’, Raquel Kennon; Ladyhood in Distress: Black Politics in Nicole Sconiers’s ‘Escape from Beckyville’, Jalondra A. Davis; Representing the Black Woman as Immoral and Abandoning the Black Family: A Cultural Analysis of 21st Century Television Dramas Starring Black Women, Marquita Gammage; Part IV: Politics and Public Implications; Sapphires Gone Wild: The Politics of Black Women’s Respectability in the Age of the Ratchet, De Anna J. Reese and Delia C. Gillis; Michelle Obama Laughs: Political Meme Warfare and the Regurgitation of the Mythological Black Woman, Kiedra Taylor; Part V: Advocacy, Activism and Affirmation of Black Womanhood; Kawaida Womanism as an Interpretative Framework for Understanding Africana Womanhood: Analyzing African American Women’s Self-Perceptions, Marquita Gammage; List of Contributors; Index.

Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood threads the various frameworks of Black and African(a) womanism, which provides the analyses with a unique perspective. The book makes one consider one’s own responsibility to women impacted by rape, domestic violence, and other forms of assault. —Siobhan E. Smith-Jones, University of Louisville; Women, Gender, and Families of Color Spring 2022, Vol. 10, No. 1 pp. 100–102