The essays in Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture chart the ways that the simultaneous interrogation of gender, race, and corporeality shape the construction of black female representation. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders has enlisted a wide variety of scholarly perspectives and critical approaches about the place of black women's bodies within the American cultural consciousness. An impressive gathering of essays and visual art by feminist scholars and artists, the book presents a persuasive argument for broadening the ongoing scholarly conversations about the body. It makes clear that the most salient discourses in poststructuralist and feminist theory are made richer and more complex when the black female body is considered.
The collection blends original and classic essays to reveal the interconnections among art, literature, public policy, the history of medicine, and theories about sexuality with regard to bodies that are both black and female. Contributors include Rachel Adams, Elizabeth Alexander, Lisa Collins, Bridgette Davis, Lisa E.Farrington, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Evelynn Hammonds, Terri Kapsalis, Jennifer L. Morgan, Siobhan B. Somerville, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Carla Williams, and Doris Witt.
Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture will appeal to both the academic reader attempting to integrate race into discussion about the female body and to the general reader curious about the history of black female representation.
Kimberly Wallace-Sanders is Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts and Institute of Women's Studies, Emory University.
Black women's bodies have been stereotyped and pathologized in images from the desexualized mammy to the emasculating Sapphire, but they rarely appear in fine-art representations of beauty and femininity. This collection of essays and visual art from a broad array of perspectives reflects concepts and theories on black women's bodies in American literature, history, and visual culture. Part 1 focuses on historic representations of black women in travel narratives and racist scientific studies, where depictions of them as primitive are used to justify slavery and brutal mistreatment. Part 2 explores the symbolic power of the black female figure, while part 3 explores attempts in American culture to control and define black women's bodies, from misuse of black women in medical experiments to strictly confining them to roles as wet nurses or prostitutes. Contributors include Rachel Adams, Elizabeth Alexander, Lisa Collins, and Siobhan B. Somerville. Though some of the contributions are a bit scholarly, this collection of eloquent and passionate essays will appeal to academic and nonacademic readers alike. Vanessa Bush
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