Black Girlhood Celebration

Download or read book Black Girlhood Celebration written by Ruth Nicole Brown and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book passionately illustrates why the celebration of Black girlhood is essential. Based on the principles and practices of a Black girl-centered program, it examines how performances of everyday Black girlhood are mediated by popular culture, personal truths, and lived experiences, and how the discussion and critique of these factors can be a great asset in the celebration of Black girls. Drawing on scholarship from women's studies, African American studies, and education, the book skillfully joins poetry, autobiographical vignettes, and keen observations into a wholehearted, participatory celebration of Black girls in a context of hip-hop feminism and critical pedagogy. Through humor, honesty, and disciplined research it argues that hip-hop is not only music, but also an effective way of working with Black girls. Black Girlhood Celebration recognizes the everyday work many young women of color are doing, outside of mainstream categories, to create social change by painting an unconventional picture of how complex - and necessary - the goal of Black girl celebration can be.

Download or read book Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century written by Nazera Sadiq Wright and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long portrayed as a masculine endeavor, the African American struggle for progress often found expression through an unlikely literary figure: the black girl. Nazera Sadiq Wright uses heavy archival research on a wide range of texts about African American girls to explore this understudied phenomenon. As Wright shows, the figure of the black girl in African American literature provided a powerful avenue for exploring issues like domesticity, femininity, and proper conduct. The characters' actions, however fictional, became a rubric for African American citizenship and racial progress. At the same time, their seeming dependence and insignificance allegorized the unjust treatment of African Americans. Wright reveals fascinating girls who, possessed of a premature knowing and wisdom beyond their years, projected a courage and resiliency that made them exemplary representations of the project of racial advance and citizenship.

Download or read book Hear Our Truths written by Ruth Nicole Brown and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this creativity informs other realizations about Black girlhood and womanhood. Founded in 2006 and co-organized by the author, SOLHOT is an intergenerational collective organizing effort that celebrates and recognizes Black girls as producers of culture and knowledge. Girls discuss diverse expressions of Black girlhood, critique the issues that are important to them, and create art that keeps their lived experiences at its center. Drawing directly from her experiences in SOLHOT, Ruth Nicole Brown argues that when Black girls reflect on their own lives, they articulate radically unique ideas about their lived experiences. She documents the creative potential of Black girls and women who are working together to advance original theories, practices, and performances that affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls' lives. Emotionally and intellectually powerful, this book expands on the work of Black feminists and feminists of color and breaks intriguing new ground in Black feminist thought and methodology.

Download or read book Carefree Black Girls written by Zeba Blay and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Kirkus Review's Best Books About Being Black in America "Powerful... Calling for Black women (in and out of the public eye) to be treated with empathy, Blay’s pivotal work will engage all readers, especially fans of Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism." —Kirkus (Starred) An empowering and celebratory portrait of Black women—from Josephine Baker to Aunt Viv to Cardi B. In 2013, film and culture critic Zeba Blay was one of the first people to coin the viral term #carefreeblackgirls on Twitter. As she says, it was “a way to carve out a space of celebration and freedom for Black women online.” In this collection of essays, Carefree Black Girls, Blay expands on this initial idea by delving into the work and lasting achievements of influential Black women in American culture--writers, artists, actresses, dancers, hip-hop stars--whose contributions often come in the face of bigotry, misogyny, and stereotypes. Blay celebrates the strength and fortitude of these Black women, while also examining the many stereotypes and rigid identities that have clung to them. In writing that is both luminous and sharp, expansive and intimate, Blay seeks a path forward to a culture and society in which Black women and their art are appreciated and celebrated.

Download or read book Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood written by Brittney Cooper and published by WW Norton. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of 2021 Hip-hop and feminism combine in this empowering guide with attitude, from best-selling author Brittney Cooper and founding members of the Crunk Feminist Collective. Loud and rowdy girls, quiet and nerdy girls, girls who rock naturals, girls who wear weave, outspoken and opinionated girls, girls still finding their voice, queer girls, trans girls, and gender nonbinary young people who want to make the world better: Feminist AF uses the insights of feminism to address issues relevant to today’s young womxn. What do you do when you feel like your natural hair is ugly, or when classmates keep touching it? How do you handle your self-confidence if your family or culture prizes fair-skinned womxn over darker-skinned ones? How do you balance your identities if you’re an immigrant or the child of immigrants? How do you dress and present yourself in ways that feel good when society condemns anything outside of the norm? Covering colorism and politics, romance and pleasure, code switching, and sexual violence, Feminist AF is the empowering guide to living your feminism out loud.

Download or read book Grown: The Black Girls' Guide to Glowing Up written by Melissa Cummings-Quarry and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR CHILDREN'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2022 'Thank you for being the baddest in the literary game, knowing and loving us Black girls' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, author of Queenie 'Such a loving and warm guide and ode to black girls, I am so happy the younger generation have this in their lives' BOLU BABALOLA, author of Love in Colour Your big sis in book form, Grown is the ultimate fully illustrated guide to navigating life as a Black teenage girl. With a foreword from the inimitable Spice Girl Melanie Brown and contributions from inspirational Black women such as Diane Abbott MP, Dorothy Koomson and Candice Carty-Williams and illustrations from Dorcas Magbadelo, Grown is a celebration of Black British girlhood that will empower teens everywhere. Being a teenager and trying to understand who you are and what you stand for is hard. Period. But if you're a Black girl and don't always see yourself represented in the books you read, the films you watch, the adverts you see or the history you're taught, it can be even tougher. Grown: The Black Girls' Guide to Glowing Up was written with one thing in mind sis. You. From understanding identity to the politics of hair to maintaining squad goals to dealing with microaggressions to consent to figuring out what career you might want, Grown has got your back. Natalie A. Carter and Melissa Cummings-Quarry, founders of Black Girls' Book Club, share stories - the wins and the Ls - and offer honest, practical advice that will show you how to own your choices. To live your truth without fear. To be grown on your own terms without limits or apologies. Grown. It's a mood. It's a mindset. It's a mantra. It's a lifestyle. It embodies everything that makes us who we are.

Download or read book A Little Devil in America written by Hanif Abdurraqib and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A sweeping, genre-bending “masterpiece” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) exploring Black art, music, and culture in all their glory and complexity—from Soul Train, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Whitney Houston, and Beyoncé ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, Publishers Weekly “Gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance.”—Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance. Touching on Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Billy Dee Williams, the Wu-Tan Clan, Dave Chappelle, and more, Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE GORDON BURN PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Rolling Stone, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Thrillist, She Reads, BookRiot, BookPage, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, LitHub, Library Journal, Booklist