Black Womens Lives

A powerful document of the day-to-day realities of Black women in Britain The Heart of the Race is a powerful corrective to a version of Britain’s history from which black women have long been excluded. It reclaims and records black women’s place in that history, documenting their day-to-day struggles, their experiences of education, work and health care, and the personal and political struggles they have waged to preserve a sense of identity and community. First published in 1985 and winner of the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize that year, The Heart of the Race is a testimony to the collective experience of black women in Britain, and their relationship to the British state throughout its long history of slavery, empire and colonialism. This new edition includes a foreword by Lola Okolosie and an interview with the authors, chaired by Heidi Safia Mirza, focusing on the impact of their book since publication and its continuing relevance today

"It's time to take back your power and your life--take it back from the bad relationships, bad careers, bad investments, bad company, and bad memories. It's time for you to live a fuller, happier, more productive, and wholesome life. This is your time to claim your blessings. God has given you a choice. Choose wisely, sis--choose to win, and enjoy every moment of it." With her national bestseller, 10 Bad Choices That Ruin Black Women's Lives, beloved television personality, lecturer, and author Dr. Grace Cornish wrote a self-help classic for black women who wanted to face and erase the relationship problems. Now, in her 10 Good Choices That Empower Black Women's Lives, Dr. Grace takes readers beyond healing just their romantic relationships--she's ready to show black women how to incorporate new, empowering, good choices into every aspect of their lives. Inspiring and insightful, this is Dr. Grace's tried-and-true prescription for finding the right balance between work, love, and spirituality. From "Trust Your Intuition" to "Taking Calculated Chances" and "Embracing the Skin You're In," Dr. Grace outlines ten positive choices that will help black women move onward and upward in their personal and professional lives. Full of first-person anecdotes from Dr. Grace's patients, friends, and fans, this is a real book about real people in tough situations and the choices they have made that led to renewed success, happiness, and peace of mind. With her trademark brand of smart, sympathetic, sister-to-sister counseling, Dr. Grace Cornish's 10 Good Choices That Empower Black Women's Lives is destined to become a classic of self-help for African-American women of all ages and backgrounds.

Kristal Brent Zook explores the lives of contemporary African America women from all walks of life. Based on her travels across America and years of interviewing and building relationships with women from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, she offers vivid archetypal portraits of a school principal in Georgia, a filmmaker in Los Angeles, a factory worker in Mississippi, a corporate executive in New York City, a prisoner in Seattle, and an organic farmer in Vermont, among others. Through these portraits, Black Women's Lives explores common overlapping themes while highlighting the shared dreams, hopes, and disappointments of ordinary women. This book also reveals the many challenges and inequalities that black women still face, and how far this nation has yet to travel if it is to live up to its promise to create an equal and just society for all citizens.

Based on interviews and archival research, this book explores how media is implicated in Black women’s lives in Britain. From accounts of twentieth-century activism and television representations, to experiences of YouTube and Twitter, Sobande's analysis traverses tensions between digital culture’s communal, counter-cultural and commercial qualities. Chapters 2 and 4 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Creates a new framework for approaching Black women’s wellness, by merging theory and practice with both personal narratives and public policy. This book offers a unique, interdisciplinary, and thoughtful look at the challenges and potency of Black women’s struggle for inner peace and mental stability. It brings together contributors from psychology, sociology, law, and medicine, as well as the humanities, to discuss issues ranging from stress, sexual assault, healing, self-care, and contemplative practice to health-policy considerations and parenting. Merging theory and practice with personal narratives and public policy, the book develops a new framework for approaching Black women’s wellness in order to provide tangible solutions. The collection reflects feminist praxis and defines womanist peace in terms that reject both “superwoman” stereotypes and “victim” caricatures. Also included for health professionals are concrete recommendations for understanding and treating Black women. “ this book speaks not only to Black women but also educates a broader audience of policymakers and therapists about the complex and multilayered realities that we must navigate and the protests we must mount on our journey to find inner peace and optimal health.” — from the Foreword by Linda Goler Blount

A new and exciting collection from Patricia Bell-Scott, the editor of the enormously successful Life Notes and the award-winning Double Stitch. With a foreword by Marcia Ann Gillespie. To tell the flat-footed truth is a southern saying that means to tell the naked truth. This revealing and inspiring anthology brings together twenty-seven creative spirits who through essays, interviews, poetry, and photographic images tell black women's lives. In the opening section that discusses the risks involved in sharing your life with others, Sapphire tells us about the challenges in recording her experiences when there has never been any validation that her life was important. The next section chronicles the adventure in claiming the lives of those who have been lost or neglected, such as Alice Walker's search for the real story of Zora Neale Hurston. The third part, which affirms lives of resistance, includes Audre Lorde's acclaimed essay "Poetry Is Not a Luxury." The final chapter, focusing on transformed lives, presents an insightful interview with Sonia Sanchez. This wonderful collection, featuring such writers as bell hooks, Barbara Smith, Marcia Ann Gillespie, and Pearl Cleage, is testimony to a flourishing literary tradition, filled with daring women, that will inspire others to tell their own stories.

In 10 Bad Choices That Ruin Black Women's Lives, relationship expert Dr. Grace Cornish writes a lively, practical, provocative guide for black women everywhere who want to shed the duds and find the studs who will treat them with respect. According to Dr. Cornish, six out of every ten black women are either in bad relationships, share a man, or are celibate. The problem is not the women themselves but the bad choices they keep making. In her frank and refreshing new book, Dr. Cornish speaks to unique aspects of the African American female psyche by targeting ten of the most common and foolish choices black women make in their lives regarding men, and how they can correct these problems, including: Sisters Dissin' Sisters No Money, No Honey Exchanging "Sexual Dealings" for Loving Feelings Loving the "Married Bachelor" Emotional Dependency Plus Unplanned Pregnancy . . . and much more. Relying on case studies, interviews, and letters she has received, Dr. Cornish gets to the heart of the matter by illuminating why black women, no matter how smart, savvy, and successful, continue to lose at the dating game, and how they can face, erase, and replace the problems that have kept them from finding true love. Why are so many black women alone or in bad relationships? Why do sisters unconsciously use weight, fear, finance, status, skin color, and other barriers to keep themselves from getting the love they want? Why do black women think that there are no eligible black men left--that the good ones are married, dead, or not yet born, and the rest are gay, bisexual, or interested only in white women?

Commemorating its 2oth year in print with a new Introduction and updated content, Shifting explores the many identities Black women must adopt in various spaces to succeed in America. Based on the African American Women's Voices Project, Shifting reveals that a large number of Black women feel pressure to compromise their true selves as they navigate America's racial and gender bigotry. Black women "shift" by altering the expectations they have for themselves or their outer appearance. They modify their speech. They shift "white" as they head to work in the morning and "Black" as they come back home each night. They shift inward, internalizing the searing pain of the negative stereotypes that they encounter daily. And sometimes they shift by fighting back. In commemoration of its twentieth year in print with a new Introduction and updated content throughout Shifting is a much-needed, clear, and comprehensive portrait of the reality of Black women's lives today.

The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this “groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States” (Ibram X. Kendi)—the perfect companion to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the United States. An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are—and have always been—instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women’s stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women’s unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today. A Black Women’s History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women’s lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women’s history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.