Black Feminist Reader

Organized into two parts, "Literary Theory" and "Social and Political Theory," this Reader explores issues of community, identity, justice, and the marginalization of African American and Caribbean women in literature, society, and political movements.

Organized into two parts, "Literary Theory" and "Social and Political Theory," this Reader explores issues of community, identity, justice, and the marginalization of African American and Caribbean women in literature, society, and political movements.

Library Journal

This collection is certain to become another essential text in the field of women's studies, replacing sociologist Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought (Routledge, 1990) as the primary black women's studies text. The editors have gathered ten highly anthologized essays form the last 25 years by black feminist literary, social, and political theorists, as well as three landmark documents from the black feminist movement. Essayists include bell hooks, Angela Davis, and Toni Morrison, as well as writers less well known outside the academy. Unfortunately, there are no essays on the arts and popular culture, and no black feminist lesbian voices are represented. Although this anthology will be sought after and read both inside and outside academe, Beverly Guy-Sheftall's thick Words of Fire (New Pr., 1995) is still the most comprehensive collection of black feminist thought, with writings from the early 1800s to the 1980s. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Sherri Barnes, Univ. of California Lib., Santa Barbara

Joy James is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. She is author of Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender & Race in US Culture (1996); Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals (1996), Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (1999). James is also editor of the Angela Y. Davis Reader (Blackwell Publishers, 1998), States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons (2000), and co-editor of Spirit, Space & Survival: African American Women In (White) Academe (1993), which received the 1994 Gustavus Myers Human Rights award.

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting is Associate Professor of French and Director of the African American Studies and Research Center at Purdue University. She is author of Frantz Fanon: Conflicts & Feminisms (1997) and Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives in French (1999). She is co-editor of Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) and Spoils of War: Women of Color, Cultures, and Revolutions (1997), which received an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America in 1997.