Black Women as Cultural Readers

— Choice

Bobo demonstrates that African-American women, as a separate interpretive community, view cultural products in a unique way. In interviews with black women, she examines their specific responses as spectators and consumers of films and novels, including Waiting to Exhale, The Color Purple, and Daughters of the Dust.

Choice

A pathbreaking study of African-American women's responses to literature and film. . . Bobo focuses on a small group of middle-class African-American women as they process literature (by Terry McMillan, Alice Walker that addresses their own experiences. . . This work should command the attention of all scholars of American popular culture.

Jacqueline Bobo is Chair and Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is editor of the anthology, Black Feminist Cultural Criticism: Classic Readings (Blackwell Publishers, January 2001) and of Black Women Film and Video Artists (Routledge, 1998).