Black feminism

[Kenneth Mostern <kmostern@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(This post comes on the impetus of an off-list discussion I have had with
Ralph Dumain on and off over the last few months.  It is primarily
directed to him, but after I wrote it it occurred to me that it wouldn't
be inappropriate to be archived with the list.)

This is a list of work by black women, some academics and others now,
some influenced by marxism, essentially none marxist in any useful
sense.  The common denominator on this list is that I think of these
books as thoughtful works, the subjectivities of which cannot be
expressed adequately through traditional marxist categories, and which,
if marxism is to be a serious praxis of social change in the U.S. now and
in the future, it is our responsibility to take seriously.  Indeed, I
propose that marxists should theorize it as a body (which is not to say,
obviously, that it is all the same or in agreement), accepting what is
powerful in it as well as criticizing its lacks.  That is a statement of
the goals of the second book-length project I've outlined, which I am
presently not working on.

You will note that this work includes authors who consciousnesses are
often appropriately characterizable as 'bourgeois', as well as work which
is 'proletarian'.  I have no objection to analysis which attempt to make
this distinction.  I believe that historically the separation between
bourgeois and proletarian consciousness for Black women has been less
extreme than in other social groupings, for fairly obvious reasons; I
also think that the gap is getting wider by the day, also for very
obvious reasons.  In ever case I select texts where the authors think of
themselves as in opposition to the status quo, regardless of what a
marxist analysis of the work might look like.

I want to emphasize two other points:  (1) it should be obvious that I
have been heavily influenced by the work of Black men (including some you
[Ralph] can't stand), and humans of every decent.  The point of this
bibliography is not to describe those wide influences, but to engage with
one underread and underrespected group.  (2)  This list gathers only
book-length texts and collections, not journal articles, and it is geared
toward the general (i.e. about 'Black women' or 'Black feminism' as such)
rather than the specific.  I do include a few specific studies, and can
suggest more if someone asks.  In general, my list has
too much literary material on it, partially because of my discipline,
partially because only literary studies has been even mildly welcoming to
Black women in the academy so much has been written in this discipline.
This is a real problem.

I have chosen to include materials published since the social movements
of the 1960s, and especially since the mid-1970s when a self-conscious
second wave Black feminism was generated.

History and theory:

Hazel Carby, *Reconstructing Womanhood* (1987)
Barbara Christian, *Black Women Novelists 1892-1976* (1979)
Patricia Hill Collins, *Black Feminist Thought* (1992)
Angela Davis, *Women, Race, and Class* (1980)
bell hooks, *Feminist Theory:  From Margin To Center* (1984)
----, *Talking Back* (1989)
----, *Black Looks* (1992)
[I regret to mention, in light of the fact that I have long touted hooks'
work, that her most recent books suck.]
June Jordan, *Civil Wars* (1981)
----, On Call (1985)
Audre Lorde, *Sister Outsider* (1983)
Deborah McDowell, *The Changing Same* (1995)
Barbara Smith, ed., *Home Girls* (1981)
Hortense Spillers, ed., *Comparative American Identities* (1991)
[Spillers is the one person on this list mentioning for the fact that her
uncollected essays are substantive, excellent, and marxist without quite
acknowledging it.  I hope she puts them together in a book sometime soon.]
Claudia Tate, *Domestic Allegories of Political Desire* (1992)
Cheryl Wall, ed., *Changing Our Own Words* (1989)
Michele Wallace, *Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman* (1976)
----, *Invisibility Blues* (1990)
----, ed., *Black Popular Culture (1992)
Alice Walker, *In Search of Our Mother's Gardens* (1983)
Patricia Williams, *The Alchemy of Race and Rights* (1991)

Fiction and poetry:
Toni Cade Bambara, *The Salt Eaters* (1981)
Marita Golden, *A Woman's Place* (1982)
hattie gossett, *presenting . . . sister noblues* (1988)
Carolivia Herron, *Thereafter Johnnie* (1991)
Gayle Jones, *Corregadora* (1975)
June Jordan, *Naming Our Destiny:  Collected Poems* (1990)
Paule Marshall, *The Chosen Place, The Timeless People* (1969)
[if this isn't a marxist novel about imperialism, I don't know what is!]
Toni Morrison, anything
Gloria Naylor, *Linden Hills* (1985)
Alice Walker, *Meridian* (1976)

Autobiography:
Elaine Brown, *A Taste of Power* (1993)
Nikki Giovanni, *Gemini* (1971)
Angela Davis, *Angela Davis, an Autobiography* (1974)
Itabari Njeri, Every Good-bye Ain't Gone* (1990)
Audre Lorde, *Zami, A New Spelling of My Name* (1982)

Afficionadoes will no doubt criticize many of my specific choices.
Sorry.

Peace

Kenneth Mostern
Assistant P-funkster of English
University of Tennessee

George Clinton:  Free your mind, and your ass will follow.
Karl Marx, paraphrased:  Free your ass, and your mind will follow.
. . . toward a materialist dialectics of funk . . . peace . . .



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