And Black Women in America - Sister Citizen

Melissa Harris Perry is one of the most prolific and thorough writers and she nailed the presentation of what black women in america think, what they have experienced and how they must be more appreciated in our country and our world.

Lots of good information--many things I already knew but documented-- but needed some hints at least about what to do with these facts. If you're working on a project or making an argument, it's a good source for locating the data to support your premise--the footnotes are almost as long as the book.

Melissa Perry has long been a favorite of mine because of her MSNBC presence. Now that I have read this marvelous textual rendition of her thinking, I love her more. Interested in Womens Studies, this is your book. Interested in Black Womens Studies, this is your book and more. Interested in quality literary interpretation, this is the one. Concerned about fairness in America, buy this book. I would say more but I don't have the time.

Over-analysis of stereotypes of black women is counterproductive to positive advancement for black women. There are many alternative and adaptive models of these women which would have offered a more realistic and balanced treatment of the subject.

As someone who believes women face a great deal of shaming and misrepresentation in (at least) American society, I was intrigued by this book's premise of looking through the lens of shame and stereotypes from an African American woman's perspective. A vantage point to which I am generally not privy.

This thorough and well researched examination of black women in America incorporates historical experiences (slavery, care-taking, etc.) with well known literature (Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Color Purple, The Bridge Poem) current events (Hurricane Katrina, Duke University & Crystal Mangum, The Obama Administration, etc.), and personal stories gleaned through the author's focus groups in multiple states.

While I found the "research" and statistical pieces of the work similar to textbook reading, the personal stories and literature tie ins were very easy to follow and drilled home the message reflected in the research. As someone who has never been a big fan of history, I was very drawn in with the historical references Harris-Perry used and appreciated how she made them further relevant with present-day events. There were also many explanations of how the African American woman's experience leads to her political involvement, choices, and activism. As someone just joining the ranks of the informed and choosing to exercise my right to vote, I appreciated this correlating information.

Overall, this read has opened my eyes even further to the messages we send/receive and how it impacts our lifestyle, choices, and interactions with others.

Tonight I closed the back cover on a exceptional work for Black History Month; a book by Melissa V. Harris-Perry, a university professor, and cable news commentator. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough (Yale U.P. 2011) portrays the emotional realities of black women's' lives ending with Shirley Chisholm's remark, "I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to me herself."

Harris-Perry refers to Delores Williams's Sisters in the Wilderness as a story of "enslavement, sexual violation, surrogacy, exile, and vulnerability as a prototype for black women in the United States where their history is replete with the same conditions, and draws a series of lessons about God's relationship to black women. Hagar is expected to bear up under unthinkably difficult conditions, but God does not abandon her even when she has been exiled. Instead, God appears to this woman, comforts her, provides for her, and creates a strategy for survival for her and her child."

Part of the significance Hagar appears in the unspoken, implicit reflection in Maya Angelou's autobiographies in the five volumes of this remarkable black woman in the United States. Musically, the composer W.C. Handy and J. Tim Brymn wrote Aunt Hagar's Blues recorded by three of my favorites, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, and Lena Horne.

Alot was put into this book by the author, because face it. She had a short window of time to get in what we all should know.

The facts bear witness to the truth. I always enjoyed her take on the air and look forward to the day that MHP will break through again to
the front of a media feed.

Thank you MHP- It aian't easy....