Private Lives, Proper Relations

Private Lives, Proper Relations PDF Author: Candice Marie Jenkins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book asks why contemporary African American literature--particularly that produced by black women--is continually concerned with issues of respectability and propriety. The author argues that this preoccupation has its origins in recurrent ideologies about African American sexuality, and that it expresses a fundamental aspect of the racial self--an often unarticulated link between the intimate and the political in black culture. In a counterpoint to her paradigmatic reading of Nella Larsen’s Passing, her analysis of black women’s narratives--including Ann Petry’s The Street,Toni Morrison’s Sula and Paradise, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Gayl Jones’ Eva’s Man--offers a theory of black subjectivity. She describes middle-class attempts to rescue the black community from accusations of sexual and domestic deviance by embracing bourgeois respectability, and asserts that behind those efforts there is the ?doubled vulnerability? of the black intimate subject. Rather than reflecting a DuBoisian tension between race and nation, to Jenkins this vulnerability signifies for the African American an opposition between two poles of potential exposure : racial scrutiny and the proximity of human intimacy. Scholars of African American culture acknowledge that intimacy and sexuality are taboo subjects among African Americans precisely because black intimate character has been pathologized.

Private Lives, Proper Relations

Private Lives, Proper Relations PDF Author: Candice Marie Jenkins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book asks why contemporary African American literature--particularly that produced by black women--is continually concerned with issues of respectability and propriety. The author argues that this preoccupation has its origins in recurrent ideologies about African American sexuality, and that it expresses a fundamental aspect of the racial self--an often unarticulated link between the intimate and the political in black culture. In a counterpoint to her paradigmatic reading of Nella Larsen’s Passing, her analysis of black women’s narratives--including Ann Petry’s The Street,Toni Morrison’s Sula and Paradise, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Gayl Jones’ Eva’s Man--offers a theory of black subjectivity. She describes middle-class attempts to rescue the black community from accusations of sexual and domestic deviance by embracing bourgeois respectability, and asserts that behind those efforts there is the ?doubled vulnerability? of the black intimate subject. Rather than reflecting a DuBoisian tension between race and nation, to Jenkins this vulnerability signifies for the African American an opposition between two poles of potential exposure : racial scrutiny and the proximity of human intimacy. Scholars of African American culture acknowledge that intimacy and sexuality are taboo subjects among African Americans precisely because black intimate character has been pathologized.

Black Bourgeois

Black Bourgeois PDF Author: Candice M. Jenkins
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452961611
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring the forces that keep black people vulnerable even amid economically privileged lives At a moment in U.S. history with repeated reminders of the vulnerability of African Americans to state and extralegal violence, Black Bourgeois is the first book to consider the contradiction of privileged, presumably protected black bodies that nonetheless remain racially vulnerable. Examining disruptions around race and class status in literary texts, Candice M. Jenkins reminds us that the conflicted relation of the black subject to privilege is not, solely, a recent phenomenon. Focusing on works by Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, Danzy Senna, Rebecca Walker, Reginald McKnight, Percival Everett, Colson Whitehead, and Michael Thomas, Jenkins shows that the seemingly abrupt discursive shift from post–Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, from an emphasis on privilege and progress to an emphasis on vulnerability and precariousness, suggests a pendulum swing between two interrelated positions still in tension. By analyzing how these narratives stage the fraught interaction between the black and the bourgeois, Jenkins offers renewed attention to class as a framework for the study of black life—a necessary shift in an age of rapidly increasing income inequality and societal stratification. Black Bourgeois thus challenges the assumed link between blackness and poverty that has become so ingrained in the United States, reminding us that privileged subjects, too, are “classed.” This book offers, finally, a rigorous and nuanced grasp of how African Americans live within complex, intersecting identities.

Beyond the Black Lady

Beyond the Black Lady PDF Author: Lisa B. Thompson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252056396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, Lisa B. Thompson explores the representation of black middle-class female sexuality by African American women authors in narrative literature, drama, film, and popular culture, showing how these depictions reclaim black female agency and illustrate the difficulties black women confront in asserting sexual agency in the public sphere. Thompson broadens the discourse around black female sexuality by offering an alternate reading of the overly determined racial and sexual script that casts the middle class "black lady" as the bastion of African American propriety. Drawing on the work of black feminist theorists, she examines symptomatic autobiographies, novels, plays, and key episodes in contemporary American popular culture, including works by Anita Hill, Judith Alexa Jackson, P. J. Gibson, Julie Dash, Kasi Lemmons, Jill Nelson, Lorene Cary, and Andrea Lee.

Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings

Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings PDF Author: Donna Aza Weir-Soley
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813063191
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Provocative . . . articulates the importance of embodied, erotic spirituality to black female subjectivity and empowerment."--Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature "Sets out to reclaim the right of black women to their sexual and erotic expression untainted by the stereotypes and disparagements that have historically confined them."--African American Review "Captures one of the most challenging concerns of scholars who engage black women's literature, culture, and theory: the ongoing quest to locate a form of black female sexual agency that neither withers in the chilly lake of sexual repression nor explodes in the heat of hypersexual stereotypes."--MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States "Successfully undertakes an analysis of how black women writers have used overlapping narrative depictions of sexuality and spirituality to recast the denigrated black female body and rewrite an empowered and fully actualized black female subject."--Candice M. Jenkins, author of Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intimacy "Weir-Soley speaks with an authority that comes from real knowledge of, investment in, and attention to the details of the African cosmologies and textual complexities she unearths."--Carine Mardorossian, SUNY-Buffalo "The most original and significant contributions are the often brilliant readings of Morrison, Adisa, and Danticat. The work is riveting, both methodologically and critically."--Leslie Sanders, York University Western European mythology and history tend to view spirituality and sexuality as opposite extremes. But sex can be more than a function of the body and religion more than a function of the mind, as exemplified in the works and characters of such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Edwidge Danticat. Donna Weir-Soley builds on the work of previous scholars who have identified the ways that black women's narratives often contain a form of spirituality rooted in African cosmology, which consistently grounds their characters' self-empowerment and quest for autonomy. What she adds to the discussion is an emphasis on the importance of sexuality in the development of black female subjectivity, beginning with Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and continuing into contemporary black women's writings. Writing in a clear, lucid, and straightforward style, Weir-Soley supports her thesis with close readings of various texts, including Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Morrison's Beloved. She reveals how these writers highlight the interplay between the spiritual and the sexual through religious symbols found in Voudoun, Santeria, Condomble, Kumina, and Hoodoo. Her arguments are particularly persuasive in proposing an alternative model for black female subjectivity.

Aberrations in Black

Aberrations in Black PDF Author: Roderick A. Ferguson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452942463
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
A hard-hitting look at the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing African American culture The sociology of race relations in America typically describes an intersection of poverty, race, and economic discrimination. But what is missing from the picture—sexual difference—can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial difference in the field of sociology. He shows how canonical sociology—Gunnar Myrdal, Ernest Burgess, Robert Park, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William Julius Wilson—has measured African Americans’s unsuitability for a liberal capitalist order in terms of their adherence to the norms of a heterosexual and patriarchal nuclear family model. In short, to the extent that African Americans’s culture and behavior deviated from those norms, they would not achieve economic and racial equality. Aberrations in Black tells the story of canonical sociology’s regulation of sexual difference as part of its general regulation of African American culture. Ferguson places this story within other stories—the narrative of capital’s emergence and development, the histories of Marxism and revolutionary nationalism, and the novels that depict the gendered and sexual idiosyncrasies of African American culture—works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. In turn, this book tries to present another story—one in which people who presumably manifest the dysfunctions of capitalism are reconsidered as indictments of the norms of state, capital, and social science. Ferguson includes the first-ever discussion of a new archival discovery—a never-published chapter of Invisible Man that deals with a gay character in a way that complicates and illuminates Ellison’s project. Unique in the way it situates critiques of race, gender, and sexuality within analyses of cultural, economic, and epistemological formations, Ferguson’s work introduces a new mode of discourse—which Ferguson calls queer of color analysis—that helps to lay bare the mutual distortions of racial, economic, and sexual portrayals within sociology.

Founding Friendships

Founding Friendships PDF Author: Cassandra A. Good
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199376174
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
Elite men and women in America's founding era formed friendships with one another that were vibrant, intimate, and politically significant. These relationships put women on equal footing with the founding fathers and other prominent men. Such friendships, Cassandra Good shows in Founding Friendships, enriched both the lives of individuals and the political fabric of the new nation.

Black Love, Black Hate

Black Love, Black Hate PDF Author: Felice Blake
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814213865
Category : LITERARY CRITICISM
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
A study of Black aesthetics, Black consciousness, and the Black Radical Imagination through depictions of intimate, intraracial conflict in Black literature.

The Right to Privacy

The Right to Privacy PDF Author: Louis Dembitz Brandeis
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 43

Get Book Here

Book Description
At the heart of 'The Right to Privacy' lies an exploration of the increasingly blurred line between the private and the public, a theme that resonates as much today as at its inception. This collection, curated with a keen eye for diversity in perspective and style, traverses the complex landscape of privacy rights in the modern world. The anthology stands out for its rigorous examination of the legal, ethical, and societal dimensions of privacy, weaving together landmark cases, pivotal essays, and critical analyses to offer a multifaceted view of privacy's evolving definition and its implications. The inclusion of foundational works such as the seminal essay by Louis Brandeis and Samuel D. Warren highlights the depth and historical significance of the discourse presented. The editors and contributors, hailing from a broad spectrum of backgrounds in law, ethics, and technology, collectively underscore the anthology's thematic coherence. Their disparate vantage points, rooted in different eras and engaging with varying aspects of privacy, illuminate the rich tapestry of legal thought and ethical considerations. This convergence of historical and contemporary views underlines the collection's alignment with significant cultural and legal shifts, reflecting society's ongoing struggle to balance personal privacy with public interest. 'The Right to Privacy' is indispensable for readers seeking to navigate the intricate and often contentious terrain of privacy rights. It promises an enlightening journey through the kaleidoscope of opinions and analyses, offering valuable insights and fostering a deeper understanding of what it means to protect personal boundaries in an increasingly open world. This anthology is a must-read for anyone invested in the pivotal debates surrounding privacy, beckoning with the allure of a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Becoming Attached

Becoming Attached PDF Author: Robert Karen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199398798
Category : Attachment behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 825

Get Book Here

Book Description
This expanded and fully updated edition of Becoming Attached tells the story of one of the great undertakings of modern psychology: the hundred-year quest to understand the nature of the child and the components of good-enough care. Psychologist and journalist Robert Karen chronicles the origin and history of a groundbreaking idea - attachment theory - and its resounding impact on the fields of developmental psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.

Behind Closed Doors

Behind Closed Doors PDF Author: Amanda Vickery
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300188560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the award-winning author of The Gentleman’s Daughter,a witty and academic illumination of daily domestic life in Georgian England. In this brilliant work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion, bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings, genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper, servants with only a locking box to call their own. Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer’s ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition. The basis of a 3-part TV series for BBC2. “Vickery is that rare thing, an…historian who writes like a novelist.”—Jane Schilling, Daily Mail “Comparison between Vickery and Jane Austen is irresistible…This book is almost too pleasurable, in that Vickery's style and delicious nosiness conceal some seriously weighty scholarship.”—Lisa Hilton, The Independent “If until now the Georgian home has been like a monochrome engraving, Vickery has made it three dimensional and vibrantly colored. Behind Closed Doors demonstrates that rigorous academic work can also be nosy, gossipy, and utterly engaging.”—Andrea Wulf, New York Times Book Review