This week, we will be featuring books that year’s exemplify the African Studies Association annual meeting theme “Rethinking Violence, Reconstruction and Reconciliation.”
One such book is Black Women as Custodians of History: Unsung Rebel (M)Others in African American and Afro-Cuban Women’s Writing by Paula Sanmartín.
“African American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has stated that anyone who analyzes black literature must do so as a comparativist … my project includes works by black women writers from different areas of the African diaspora in order to examine literary representations of the historic roots of black women’s resistance in both the United States and Cuba. … I analyze how, lacking a safe space to write history, they have placed themselves in a position where they can have some influence on the way history is being written. In addition, I emphasize the way these black women authors disassemble racist and sexist stereotypes, (re)constructing black female subjectivity through an image of active resistance against oppression, one that authorizes unconventional definitions of motherhood and/or womanhood. This image, which I have named “the rebel (m)other,” allows the authors to make black women’s presence and participation in history explicit while redefining heroism from a black female perspective. My project argues that these writings also highlight the significance of black women’s specific relationship to historical national tensions in the United States and Cuba. … The chapters in Black Women as Custodians of History showcase the way that drawing on dialogic relationships can open up new lines of inquiry and redress the historical imbalance of Western historiography and literary history by presenting black women’s history and subjectivity as multiple and discontinuous.”
Browse Black Women as Custodians of History now. Recommend this book to your library and colleagues.
This book is in the Cambria Studies in Slavery Series headed by Ana Lucia Araujo, author and editor of the highly acclaimed books on slavery (which will be featured this week as well).
From now until December 15, enjoy a special 35% discount on all hardcover titles. Use web coupon code ASA2014. Libraries can use this too.
#AfricanStudies #ASA2014 #slavery
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