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Title details for Gender Talk by Johnnetta B. Cole - Available

Gender Talk

The Struggle For Women's Equality in African American Communities

by Johnnetta B. Cole
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
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Why has the African American community remained silent about gender even as race has moved to the forefront of our nation’s consciousness? In this important new book, two of the nation’s leading African American intellectuals offer a resounding and far-reaching answer to a question that has been ignored for far too long. Hard-hitting and brilliant in its analysis of culture and sexual politics, Gender Talk asserts boldly that gender matters are critical to the Black community in the twenty-first century.
In the Black community, rape, violence against women, and sexual harassment are as much the legacy of slavery as is racism. Johnnetta Betsch Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall argue powerfully that the only way to defeat this legacy is to focus on the intersection of race and gender.
Gender Talk examines why the “race problem” has become so male-centered and how this has opened a deep divide between Black women and men. The authors turn to their own lives, offering intimate accounts of their experiences as daughters, wives, and leaders. They examine pivotal moments in African American history when race and gender issues collided with explosive results—from the struggle for women’s suffrage in the nineteenth century to women’s attempts to gain a voice in the Black Baptist movement and on into the 1960s, when the Civil Rights movement and the upsurge of Black Power transformed the Black community while sidelining women.
Along the way, they present the testimonies of a large and influential group of Black women and men, including bell hooks, Faye Wattleton, Byllye Avery, Cornell West, Robin DG Kelley, Michael Eric Dyson, Marcia Gillispie, and Dorothy Height.
Provding searching analysis into the present, Cole and Guy-Sheftall uncover the cultural assumptions and attitudes in hip-hop and rap, in the O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson trials, in the Million Men and Million Women Marches, and in the battle over Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Fearless and eye-opening, Gender Talk is required reading for anyone concerned with the future of African American women—and men.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 14, 2009

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307527684

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307527684
      • File size: 2103 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 16, 2002
      Cole, former Spelman College president, and Guy-Sheftall, Spelman professor of women's studies, here offer an impassioned and arguably necessarily harsh critique of gender relations between black men and women. Longtime activists, they are well-credentialed to detail and declaim what they see as the continued oppression of black women in America. No mean-spirited hyperbolic spew, the book is thorough, historically centered and respectful. It concisely renders its polemic, raising essential questions: why do hip-hop lyrics reduce black women to "bitches"? Why do blacks overwhelmingly support black men convicted of crimes against women? Why are the achievements of black women diminished (not a single woman was allowed to speak at the 1963 March on Washington)? Most pertinently, why has the black community virtually ignored violence against black women, while black-on-black crime between men is discussed in depth? Asserting that much intraracial conflict has been laid at the feet of slavery, the authors mostly concur that slavery may have precipitated conflicts between black men and women, but the need for black men to align themselves with (white) patriarchal dominance superseded their loyalty to black women. Thoughtful, provocative, concerned and urgent, this work ignites a much-needed debate over the state of true black community and the role of women within that community. (On sale Feb. 4)Forecast:Ballantine plans an author tour, radio and online interviews and ads in African-American newspapers in major markets. Interviews with and references to prominent African-Americans, including Cornel West, Toni Morrison and Pearl Cleage, plus the controversial nature of the topic, should propel sales to popular, feminist, queer and academic markets.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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