“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed, but when we are silent we are still afraid, so it is better to speak.”
“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”
- Audre Lorde
The origins of Feminist Theory stem from Black Women scholars and activists who paved the way for the thought and nuance of gender studies. If you want to learn about feminisms you MUST study and understand the literature of Black Feminism(s). Black Feminism is a specific category of intersectional feminism that centers around the experiences, struggles, and perspectives of Black Women. Black Feminism(s) are multifaceted and encompass various philosophical entry points.
Today, I want to give YOU the resources to learn and understand Black Feminism(s). Black Feminist theory can often be found in Kritical Debate, and resources can be inaccessible. Thus, I gathered a list of resources for you. Additionally, it is imperative that the “Intersectional Feminist Community” NOT exclude Black Feminism(s). Often, white women quite literally practice exclusion in their “perfect liberal feminism” that only perpetuates cycles of oppression.
NON-BLACK FOLK: Educate yourself and use your platforms to amplify the voices of Black Women and stand behind the fight for justice. REMEMBER TO CONTINUOUSLY CALL OUT INJUSTICES AND MICROAGGRESSIONS WITHIN THE FEMINIST COMMUNITY.
So, here is a “Black Feminism(s) Bibliography”:
Austin, Algernon. “Theorizing Difference within Black Feminist Thought: The Dilemma of Sexism in Black Communities.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 6, no. 3, 1999, pp. 52–66. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41674895.
Barbara Bush (2008) ‘Daughters of injur’d Africk’: African women and the transatlantic slave trade, Women's History Review, 17:5, 673-698, DOI: 10.1080/09612020802316157
BLISS, JAMES. “Hope Against Hope: Queer Negativity, Black Feminist Theorizing, and Reproduction without Futurity.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 48, no. 1, 2015, pp. 83–98., www.jstor.org/stable/44030736.
Brown‐Glaude, Winnifred R. “But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women Faculty Transforming the Academy.” Signs, vol. 35, no. 4, 2010, pp. 801–809. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651035.
Carruthers, C. A. (2018). Unapologetic: A Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements.
Chepp, V. (2015). Black feminist theory and the politics of irreverence: The case of women’s rap. Feminist Theory, 16(2), 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700115585705
Cooper, B. C., In Morris, S. M., & In Boylorn, R. M. (2017). The crunk feminist collection.
James, J., & Sharpley-Whiting, T. D. (2000). The Black feminist reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Sojourner Truth : Ain't I a Woman? New York :Scholastic, 1992. Print.
Collins, Patricia Hill. "Feminism in the Twentieth Century." In Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1, ed. Darlene Clark Hine. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1993.
Collins, Patricia Hill. “WHAT'S IN A NAME? Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond.” The Black Scholar, vol. 26, no. 1, 1996, pp. 9–17. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41068619.
Collins, Patricia Hill. “Gender, Black Feminism, and Black Political Economy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 568, 2000, pp. 41–53. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1049471.
COLLINS, PATRICIA HILL. “LOOKING BACK, MOVING AHEAD: Scholarship in Service to Social Justice.” Gender and Society, vol. 26, no. 1, 2012, pp. 14–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23212234.
The Combahee River Collective. “A Black Feminist Statement.” Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 3/4, 2014, pp. 271–280. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24365010.
Crenshaw, Kimberle Williams (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6):1241-99.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of anti-discrimination doctrine, feminist theory and anti-racist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), pp.139-167.
Davis, A. Y. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press.
Davis, Angela Y. (Angela Yvonne), 1944-. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York :Pantheon Books, 1998. Print.
Davis, Angela Y. (Angela Yvonne), 1944-. The Prison Industrial Complex and Its Impact on Communities of Color. [Madison, WI] :[University of Wisconsin--Madison], 1999. Print.
Denise Ferreira Da Silva (2014) Toward a Black Feminist Poethics, The Black Scholar,44:2, 81-97, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2014.11413690
Doucet-Battle, J. (2016). Bioethical matriarchy: Race, gender, and the gift in genomic research. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2(2), 1-28
Patrice Douglass & Frank Wilderson (2013) The Violence of Presence, The Black Scholar, 43:4, 117-123, DOI: 10.5816/blackscholar.43.4.0117
Frazier, Chelsea. Troubling Ecology: Wangechi Mutu, Octavia Butler, and Black Feminist Interventions in Environmentalism, Source: Critical Ethnic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 40-72 Published by: University of Minnesota Press.
Gumbs, A. P. (2017). Pulse. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(7), 505–508. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417718288
Gumbs, A. P. (2016). Spill: Scenes of black feminist fugitivity.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, ed. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought. Introduction. New York: The New Press, 1995.
Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human, Alexander G. Weheliye, 2014.
Hammonds, Evelynn (1994) ‘Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality’. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 6(2–3): 126–145.
Hamer, Jennifer, and Helen Neville. “Revolutionary Black Feminism: Toward a Theory of Unity and Liberation.” The Black Scholar, vol. 28, no. 3/4, 1998, pp. 22–29. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41068802.
Hartman, Saidiya V. (2003) ‘“The Position of the Unthought”: An Interview with Saidiya V. Hartman’. Interviewed by Frank B. Wilderson, III. Qui Parle, 13(2): 183–201.
Hartman, S. V. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hartman, S. V. (2007). Lose your mother: A journey along the Atlantic slave route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Saidiya Hartman (2016) The Belly of the World: A Note on Black Women’s Labors, Souls, 18:1, 166-173, DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2016.1162596
Harnois, Catherine E. “Race, Gender, and the Black Women's Standpoint.” Sociological Forum, vol. 25, no. 1, 2010, pp. 68–85. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40542541.
Harris, Laura Alexandra. “Queer Black Feminism: The Pleasure Principle.” Feminist Review, no. 54, 1996, pp. 3–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1395608.
Hollis, E. (2018). Figuring the Angry Inch: Transnormativity, the black femme and the fraudulent phallus; or fleshly remainders of the ‘ungendered’ and the ‘unthought.’ Feminist Theory, 19(1), 23–40.
Hong, Grace Kyungwon. “‘The Future of Our Worlds’: Black Feminism and the Politics of Knowledge in the University under Globalization.” Meridians, vol. 8, no. 2, 2008, pp. 95–115. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40338753.
hooks, bell (1992) ‘Selling Hot Pussy: Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace’. In: Black Looks: Race and Representation. London: Turnaround, pp. 61–78.
hooks, bell, 1952-. Feminism Is for Everybody : Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA :South End Press, 2000. Print.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
hooks, b. (2015). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black.
Hull, Gloria t., and Barbara Smith. “‘Keeping Black Women at the Center’: a Conversation between Gloria t. Hull and Barbara Smith.” Off Our Backs, vol. 12, no. 5, 1982, pp. 22–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25774440.
Jacobs, Harriet Ann (2009) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. 119th edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jackson, Zakiyyah (2016) Speech at the Black Feminist Futures Symposium. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, 20 May.
Joy James (2013) Afrarealism and the Black Matrix, The Black Scholar, 43:4, 124-131,DOI: 10.5816/blackscholar.43.4.0124
James, Joy. “RESTING IN GARDENS, BATTLING IN DESERTS: BLACK WOMEN'S ACTIVISM.” The Black Scholar, vol. 29, no. 4, 1999, pp. 2–7. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41068835.
Tiffany Lethabo King. “Humans Involved: Lurking in the Lines of Posthumanist Flight.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2017, pp. 162–185. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/jcritethnstud.3.1.0162.
King, T. L. (2016) The Labor of (Re)reading Plantation Landscapes Fungible(ly). Antipode, 48: 1022–1039. doi: 10.1111/anti.12227.
King, Tiffany Lethabo. "New World Grammars: The ‘Unthought’ Black Discourses of Conquest." Theory & Event, vol. 19 no. 4, 2016. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/633275.
King, Tiffany Lethabo. "Black 'Feminisms' and Pessimism: Abolishing Moynihan's Negro Family." Theory & Event, vol. 21 no. 1, 2018, pp. 68-87. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/685970.
Lemons, Gary. “When White Students Write about Being White: Challenging Whiteness in a Black Feminist Classroom.” Counterpoints, vol. 273, 2004, pp. 213–233. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42978610.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
Mary Phillips, Robyn C. Spencer, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest & Tracye A. Matthews (2017) Ode to Our Feminist Foremothers: The Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project on Collaborative Praxis and Fifty Years of Panther History, Souls, 19:3, 241-260, DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2017.1390378
Love, B. L. (2017). A Ratchet Lens: Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop, and the Black Ratchet Imagination. Educational Researcher, 46(9), 539–547. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17736520
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson (2016): Black women’s bodies, ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US, Gender and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2016.1225011
Morrison, T. (2004). Beloved: A novel.
Morrison, T. (1987). Sula. New York: New American Library.
McKittrick, K. (2006). Demonic grounds: Black women and the cartographies of struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Katherine McKittrick, ed. Sylvia Wynter : On Being Human as Praxis. Durham :Duke University Press, 2015.
Katherine McKittrick (2014) Mathematics Black Life, The Black Scholar, 44:2, 16-28,DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2014.11413684
Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Watertown, Mass: Persephone Press.
Nash, Jennifer C. “Practicing Love: Black Feminism, Love-Politics, and Post-Intersectionality.” Meridians, vol. 11, no. 2, 2011, pp. 1–24. JSTOR,
Nash, Jennifer C. (2014) ‘Black Anality’. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 20(4): 439–460.
Nash, Jennifer C. “Re-Thinking Intersectionality.” Feminist Review, no. 89, 2008, pp. 1–15. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40663957.
Nijah Cunningham (2017) The nonarrival of black freedom (c. 12.6.84), Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 27:1, 112-120, DOI: 10.1080/0740770X.2017.1282097
Nain, Gemma Tang. “Black Women, Sexism and Racism: Black or Antiracist Feminism?” Feminist Review, no. 37, 1991, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1395468.
Neville, Helen A., and Jennifer Hamer. “‘We Make Freedom’: An Exploration of Revolutionary Black Feminism.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 31, no. 4, 2001, pp. 437–461. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2668025.
Nicole Ivy (2016) Bodies of Work: A Meditation on Medical Imaginaries and Enslaved Women, Souls, 18:1, 11-31, DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2016.1162590
Diana Paton (2017) Maternal struggles and the politics of childlessness under pronatalist Caribbean slavery, Slavery & Abolition, 38:2, 251-268, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2017.1316963
Randy M. Browne & John Wood Sweet (2016) Florence Hall's ‘Memoirs’: Finding African Women in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Slavery & Abolition, 37:1, 206-221,DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2015.1074795
Roberts, D. E. (1997). Killing the black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. New York: Pantheon Books.
Roach, S. (2018). Black pussy power: Performing acts of black eroticism in Pam Grier’s Blaxploitation films. Feminist Theory, 19(1), 7–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700117742866
Ross, L., & Solinger, R. (2017). Reproductive justice: An introduction.
Sampada Aranke & Nikolas Oscar Sparks (2017) Reading and feeling after Scenes of Subjection, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 27:1, 1-6, DOI: 10.1080/0740770X.2017.1282114
Sara Clarke Kaplan. “Love and Violence/Maternity and Death: Black Feminism and the Politics of Reading (Un)Representability.” Black Women, Gender Families, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 94–124. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.1.1.0094.
Schiller, Naomi. “A Short History of Black Feminist Scholars.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 29, 2000, pp. 119–125. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2678863.
Christina Sharpe (2014) Black Studies, The Black Scholar, 44:2, 59-69, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2014.11413688
Sharpe, Christina (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Sasha Turner (2017) The nameless and the forgotten: maternal grief, sacred protection, and the archive of slavery, Slavery & Abolition, 38:2, 232-250, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2017.1316962
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics, vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 65–81. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/464747.
Sarah Jane Cervenak & J. Kameron Carter (2017) Untitled and Outdoors: Thinking with Saidiya Hartman, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 27:1, 45-55, DOI: 10.1080/0740770X.2017.1282116
Sarah Haley (2017) This is your afterlife: gender, slavery, and televisual subjection,Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 27:1, 35-44, DOI: 10.1080/0740770X.2017.1282118
Smith, Barbara. “BLACK FEMINISM DIVORCED FROM BLACK FEMINIST ORGANIZING.” The Black Scholar, vol. 14, no. 1, 1983, pp. 38–45. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41068082.
Simien, Evelyn M., and Rosalee A. Clawson. “The Intersection of Race and Gender: An Examination of Black Feminist Consciousness, Race Consciousness, and Policy Attitudes.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 3, 2004, pp. 793–810. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42955973.
Terrefe, Selamawit D., Speaking the Hieroglyph, Theory & Event, Volume 21, Number 1, January 2018, pp. 124-147 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Terrion L. Williamson (2017) Why Did They Die? On Combahee and the Serialization of Black Death, Souls, 19:3, 328-341, DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2017.1389633
Treva B. Lindsey (2017) Negro Women May Be Dangerous: Black Women’s Insurgent Activism in the Movement for Black Lives, Souls, 19:3, 315-327, DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2017.1389596
Walker, A. (1973). In love & trouble: Stories of Black women. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Willis, Deborah (2010) Black Venus 2010: They Called Her ‘Hottentot’. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 257–337. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41949874.
I also stumbled across a Google Drive with TONS of Black History/ Black Feminism(s) resources:
Black Feminism(s) Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XrcBXvrLH35IrbKoLle_nkF0gXcsYVRv?usp=sharing
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to email me (annadean13@gmail.com)! I hope these resources help you further your knowledge in the world of Intersectional Theory:)
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Anna Dean (she/her)
LOUDwomen Co-Founder & CEO
Bentonville West High School ‘21
@annadean13