Colorstruck

First person narrative by white-looking black author who chronicles lives of white looking black fraternal twins Chloe/Solomon Bechet who escape from New Orleans KKK to Harlem, NY. Both enter 1920's show business, she as a black dancer/actress, he as a white stuntman/director. Behind the scene fiction expose on passing for white, inter/intraracial conflicts, skin color stereotypes, Harlem renaissance, Hollywood, New Orleans, Jazz music, black/indians in entertainment 1900-1936.

"A deathbed shouldn't be the peacemaker in this family." Fifteen-year-old Renee Steele never understood what PaPa's words meant, until she's caught in the middle of a growing battle between her two older cousins. Their clashing attitudes regarding skin tone, trigger a sensitive nerve in their Grandma Bell. As tension mounts between the three girls, Grandma Bell detects trouble returning from the grave. She’s determined to stop it, and takes the girls on a quest back in time to do it. Her narrative begins with her secret courtship and eloping with Pa-Pa, “Buck Steele”, because their fathers are archenemies. Due to a lack of money, the newlyweds are forced to live with Buck’s parents, Silas and Emma. Grandma Bell's newlywed dreams turn into her worst nightmare, as she begins her married life as the despised dark-skinned daughter-in-law. Her presence does more than anger her in-laws…it haunts them!

Skin color and skin tone has historically played a significant role in determining the life chances of African Americans and other people of color. It has also been important to our understanding of race and the processes of racialization. But what does the relationship between skin tone and stratification outcomes mean? Is skin tone correlated with stratification outcomes because people with darker complexions experience more discrimination than those of the same race with lighter complexions? Is skin tone differentiation a process that operates external to communities of color and is then imposed on people of color? Or, is skin tone discrimination an internally driven process that is actively aided and abetted by members of communities of color themselves? Color Struck provides answers to these questions. In addition, it addresses issues such as the relationship between skin tone and wealth inequality, anti-black sentiment and whiteness, Twitter culture, marriage outcomes and attitudes, gender, racial identity, civic engagement and politics at predominately White Institutions. Color Struck can be used as required reading for courses on race, ethnicity, religious studies, history, political science, education, mass communications, African and African American Studies, social work, and sociology.

Shades of Difference addresses the widespread but little studied phenomenon of colorism—the preference for lighter skin and the ranking of individual worth according to skin tone. Examining the social and cultural significance of skin color in a broad range of societies and historical periods, this insightful collection looks at how skin color affects people's opportunities in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America. Is skin color bias distinct from racial bias? How does skin color preference relate to gender, given the association of lightness with desirability and beauty in women? The authors of this volume explore these and other questions as they take a closer look at the role Western-dominated culture and media have played in disseminating the ideal of light skin globally. With its comparative, international focus, this enlightening book will provide innovative insights and expand the dialogue around race and gender in the social sciences, ethnic studies, African American studies, and gender and women's studies.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

Applies a psychoanalytic approach to analyze the black and white characters and authors of five plays by African-American women.

Presents a powerful argument backed by historical fact and anecdotal evidence, that color prejudice remains a devastating divide within black America.

Collected plays of the African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960).