African Americans Doing Feminism
Putting Theory into Everyday Practice
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African American women and men share their stories of how feminism has influenced their daily lives.
Description
How might ordinary people apply feminist principles to everyday situations? How do feminist ideas affect the daily behaviors and decisions of those who seek to live out the basic idea that women are as fully human as men? This collection of essays uses concrete examples to illuminate the ways in which African Americans practice feminism on a day-to-day basis. Demonstrating real-life situations of feminism in action, each essay tackles an issue—such as personal finances, parenting, sexual harassment, reproductive freedom, incest, depression and addiction, or romantic relationships—and articulates a feminist approach to engaging with the problem or concern. Contributors include African American scholars, artists, activists, and business professionals who offer personal accunts of how they encountered feminist ideas and are using them now as a guide to living. The essays included reveal how feminist principles affect people's perceptions of their ability to change themselves and society, because the personal is not always self-evidently political.
Aaronette M. White is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz. She is the author of Ain't I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom, also published by SUNY Press.
Reviews
"If … you seek a book that will touch you on a personal level, that will provoke you to examine your own perspective, and that will likely stimulate new research questions, pick up a copy of White's book. You will be introduced to a group of people who don't have to think about begin feminist; they simply live it every day." — PsycCRITIQUES
"This collection of first-person narratives provides much-needed examples of the concrete ways in which contemporary African Americans, both women and men, live by feminist principles, not just as beliefs or theories but by their actions in concrete situations. It contributes to the continued development of feminist theory in practice, grounding it in the diverse experiences of self-identified African American feminists." — SirReadaLot.org
"The topic of thinking about feminism and feminist theory as functional is very important: students often want to know more about how they can put feminist thinking and politics into action. Having concrete, lived examples of how various people have done so is a real contribution to the field." — Vivian M. May, author of Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction