African American Women Studies

Feminism and atheism are “dirty words” that Americans across the political spectrum love to debate - and hate. Throw them into a blender and you have a toxic brew that supposedly defies decency, respectability, and Americana. Putting gender at the center of the equation, progressive “Religious Nones” of color are spearheading an anti-racist, social justice humanism that disrupts the “colorblind” ethos of European American atheist and humanist agendas, which focus principally on church-state separation. 

At the historic Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Anita Hill spoke out courageously about workplace sexual harassment. Now she turns to the topic of home. As our country reels from the subprime mortgage meltdown and the resulting devastation of so many families and communities, Hill takes us inside this “crisis of home” and exposes its deep roots in race and gender inequities, which continue to imperil every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream. In this period of recovery and its aftermath, what is at stake is the inclusive democracy the Constitution promises.

Still I Rise takes its title from a work by Maya Angelou, and it resonates with the same spirit of an unconquerable soul, a woman who is captain of her fate. This book embodies the strength of character of the inspiring women profiled within. Each chapter outlines the fall and rise of great women heroes who smashed all obstacles rather than let all obstacles smash them. Still I Rise offers hope to those undergoing their own Sisyphean struggles. Intrepid women heroes are the antithesis of the traditional damsels in distress; rather than waiting for the prince, they took salvation into their own hands.

Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.

We've heard the name "Condoleezza Rice" over and over again as the spokesperson for President George W. Bush in matters of national security and foreign affairs. She presented a balanced, firm, unafraid presence to the country after the terrible events of September 11, 2001, as she spoke to the media and the public on behalf of the President. And, when the President has something to say about our friends and foes overseas, "Condi," as she is known to her friends, is usually standing in the background.

From the editor of the best-selling anthology The Meaning of Michelle, a celebration of one of the greatest stars of our time, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Economist and award-winning author Sylvia Ann Hewlett blends vivid stories with powerful new data in assessing the impact of the #MeToo movement in corporate America and provides concrete action to help executives and companies create more inclusive and safe work environments for women, people of color, and LGBTQ employees. While the #MeToo movement has exposed the enormous harm done by sexual misconduct in the workplace, the movement’s full promise has not been fulfilled, Sylvia Ann Hewlett argues.

Part one of The Informal Letter to the Black Woman discusses how the systems uses us to continue to emasculate the Black man through media and marketing.

In June 2022, at the Black Men’s Forum (BMF), we went to the source and provided a platform for African American men and a few African American male teenagers to speak their truths in answering 58 questions. All information shared is a part of history and will be passed onto the next generation to build upon society and learn about the strengths and hindrances affecting African-American boys.

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism, and selected correspondences, including more than 30 previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. This volume will introduce a new generation to an educator, intellectual, and activist whose prescient insights underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African American activism.

An essential guide to lifelong health and greater well-being from one of today’s highly regarded women’s health experts.

Black women have been dehumanized through sexual objectification in the United States of America for hundreds of years and are still being degraded to this very day. The history behind this needs to be shared with the world so that the negative untruths about the Black woman can be dispelled and our young women will understand that media, news, music, and television are also tools used to take away their intelligence, respect, strength, beauty, and self-pride that they innately own.

Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to—true ones of course—but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away.

When Betsey Stockton was a child, she was "given, as a slave" to the household of Rev. Ashbel Green, a prominent pastor and later the president of what is now Princeton University. Although she never went to school, she devoured the books in Green's library. After being emancipated, she used that education to benefit other people of color, first in Hawai'i as a missionary, then Philadelphia, and, for the last three decades of her life, Princeton—a college town with a genteel veneer that never fully hid its racial hostility.

Daphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics, collectors, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. How is it possible, she asks, that iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin and Beyonce exist simultaneously at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry? Liner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective on these acclaimed figures—a perspective informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women concerned with the work of their musical peers.

Discover how a young girl who was the star of her school's debate team became a federal jurist and the first Black woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court.

Making headlines when it was launched in 2015, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley’s undergraduate course “Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism” has inspired students from all walks of life. In Beyoncé in Formation, Tinsley now takes her rich observations beyond the classroom, using the blockbuster album and video Lemonade as a soundtrack for vital new-millennium narratives. 

A powerful document about slavery, emancipation, faith, and resilience, Narrative of Sojourner Truth chronicles the life of a nineteenth-century trailblazer in the battle for racial and gender equality. Beginning with her earliest reminiscences of her brutal childhood, Truth recounts the first thirty years of her life in bondage, including her marriage and her trials as a mother, and then describes her eventual liberation. At the heart of this extraordinary record is Truth’s spiritual epiphany.

Shayla Lawson is major. You don’t know who she is. Yet. But that’s okay. She is on a mission to move Black girls like herself from best supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she’s taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn’t always told, the places where the voices of Black girls haven’t been heard.

Remaking a Life uses the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a lens to understand how women generate radical improvements in their social well being in the face of social stigma and economic disadvantage. Drawing on interviews with nationally recognized AIDS activists as well as over one hundred Chicago-based women living with HIV/AIDS, Celeste Watkins-Hayes takes listeners on an uplifting journey through women’s transformative projects, a multidimensional process in which women shift their approach to their physical, social, economic, and political survival.