Black Woman

When Lieutenant Uhura took her place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek, the actress Nichelle Nichols went where no African American woman had ever gone before. Yet several decades passed before many other black women began playing significant roles in speculative (i.e., science fiction, fantasy, and horror) film and television—a troubling omission, given that these genres offer significant opportunities for reinventing social constructs such as race, gender, and class. Challenging cinema’s history of stereotyping or erasing black women on-screen, Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before showcases twenty-first-century examples that portray them as central figures of action and agency. Writing for fans as well as scholars, Diana Adesola Mafe looks at representations of black womanhood and girlhood in American and British speculative film and television, including 28 Days Later, AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Children of Men, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Firefly, and Doctor Who: Series 3. Each of these has a subversive black female character in its main cast, and Mafe draws on critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories to explore each film and show, placing the black female characters at the center of the analysis and demonstrating their agency. The first full study of black female characters in speculative film and television, Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before shows why heroines such as Lex in AVP and Zoë in Firefly are inspiring a generation of fans, just as Uhura did.

In the tradition of Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, and The Sweeter the Juice, Notes of a White Black Woman explores the meaning of race in the United States, the power of racial categories in our lives, and the personal experience of being a black professional in an overwhelmingly white world.

`The Black Woman...has a great deal of relevance to the black woman in Britain today and its message is clear. We must continue to use our heritage of strength and determination...to establish our right to equal citizenship...' -- New Community, Spring-Summer 1981 `...a serious attempt to inform by presenting historical, research, and experiential accounts of Black women by Black women. The book should be relevent on both an informative and sensitizing basis for graduate level social science students.' -- Sex Roles, Vol 7 No 12, 1981 `...an impressive group of papers regarding the experiences of African American women, past and present. It is a collection that is original, thought provo

It's time for a REDEFINITION among black women in America. In its 2011 hardcover release, Black Woman Redefined was a top-selling book and took home a 2011 Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award from the African American Literary Awards. Author Sophia A. Nelson won the 2012 Champions of Diversity Award, given each year by diversity business executives in Fortune 100 companies. Black Woman Redefined was inspired in part by what Nelson calls “open season on accomplished black women": from Don Imus's name-calling of black female basketball players in 2007 and a 2009 Yale University study titled “Marriage Eludes High-Achieving Black Women," to the more recent revelation that First Lady Michelle Obama is concerned about being painted as an “angry, black woman." In Black Woman Redefined, Nelson sets out to change this cultural perception, taking readers on a no-holds-barred journey into the hearts and minds of accomplished black women to reveal truths, tribulations, and insights like never before. This groundbreaking book provides black women of a new generation with essential career and life-coaching advice. Based on never-before-done research on college-educated, career-driven black women, Nelson offers her fellow “sisters"—and those who know, love, and work with them—a feel-good volume for personal and professional success that empowers them without tearing others down.

Recovering the Black Female Body recognizes the pressing need to highlight through scholarship the vibrant energy of African American women's attempts to wrest control of the physical and symbolic construction of their bodies away from the distortions of others.

Offers a rare view inside the university boardroom, uncovering the vital role Black women educational leaders have played in ensuring access and equity for all. Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action examines the leadership strategies that Black women educators have employed as influential power brokers in predominantly white colleges and universities in the United States. Author Donna J. Nicol tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Claudia H. Hampton, the California State University (CSU) system's first Black woman trustee, who later became the board's first woman chair, and her twenty-year fight (1974-94) to increase access within the CSU for historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. Amid a growing white backlash against changes brought on by the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Nicol argues that Hampton enacted "sly civility" to persuade fellow trustees, CSU system officials, and state lawmakers to enforce federal and state affirmative action mandates. Black Woman on Board explores how Hampton methodically "played the game of boardsmanship," using the soft power she cultivated amongst her peers to remove barriers that might have impeded the implementation and expansion of affirmative action policies and programs. In illuminating the ways that Hampton transformed the CSU as the "affirmative action trustee," this remarkable book makes an important contribution to the history of higher education and to the historiography of Black women's educational leadership in the post-Civil Rights era.

Explores the restrictive myth of the strong black woman through interviews, revealing the emotional and physical toll this "performance" can have.