Blues Legacies And Black Feminism

Download or read book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism written by Angela Y. Davis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith−published here in their entirety for the first time−Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a conciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph.

Download or read book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism written by Angela Y. Davis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1999-01-26 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith—published here in their entirety for the first time—Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a conciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph.

Download or read book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism written by Angela Yvonne Davis and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 1998 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of "Women, Race and Class" suggests that "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday represent a black working-class, feminist ideology and historical consciousness. Davis' illuminating analysis of the songs performed by these artists provides readers with a compelling and transformative understanding of their musical and social contributions and of their relation to both the African-American community and American culture. of photos.

Download or read book Black Pearls written by Daphne Duval Harrison and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some singers included in this book are Sippie Wallace, Victoria Spivey, Edith Wilson, and Alberta Hunter.

Download or read book Feminist Freedom Warriors written by Chandra Talpade Mohanty and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born out of an engagement with anti-racist feminist struggles as women of color from the Global South, Feminist Freedom Warriors (FFW) is a project showcasing cross-generational histories of feminist activism addressing economic, anti-racist, social justice, and anti-capitalist issues across national borders. This feminist reader is a companion to the FFW video archive project that is currently available online. Using text and images, the book presents short narratives from the women featured in the FFW project and illustrates the intersecting struggles for justice in the fight against oppression. These are stories of sister-comrades, whose ideas, words, actions, and visions of economic and social justice continue to inspire a new generation of women activists.

Download or read book Women, Race, & Class written by Angela Y. Davis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. “Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard.”—The New York Times Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.

Download or read book Good Booty written by Ann Powers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NPR Best Books of 2017 In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR’s acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race. In Good Booty, Ann Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form. Powers takes us from nineteenth-century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-twentieth century rock-and-roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars. Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and the cyborg known as Britney Spears to illuminate how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song. This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America's anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom. In a survey that spans more than a century of music, Powers both heralds little known artists such as Florence Mills, a contemporary of Josephine Baker, and gospel queen Dorothy Love Coates, and sheds new light on artists we think we know well, from the Beatles and Jim Morrison to Madonna and Beyoncé. In telling the history of how American popular music and sexuality intersect—a magnum opus over two decades in the making—Powers offers new insights into our nation psyche and our soul.