Abstract:The Rising Song of African American WomenBarbara Omolade New York and London: Routledge, 1994.Reviewed by Linda Carty Sociology Department University of Michigan Flint, MichiganBarbara Omolade present...The Rising Song of African American WomenBarbara Omolade New York and London: Routledge, 1994.Reviewed by Linda Carty Sociology Department University of Michigan Flint, MichiganBarbara Omolade presents a well researched and very detailed analysis of the imperatives that shape the lives of African American women. She explores the historical, political, social and cultural significance of Black feminism, from the everyday experiences of working - class Black women to the ontological nuances of a Black feminist pedagogy. By weaving an intellectual tapestry of the past and the present, she offers her readers some insight into the origins of many of the dilemmas that African American women must routinely overcome.Omolade begins her book with a discussion of slavery, dissecting the rape of the Black woman and the commodification of every part of her body by the master for capital accumulation:To him she was a fragmented commodity...her head and her heart were separated from her back and her hands and divided from her womb and vagina. Her back and muscle were pressed into field labor where she was forced to work with men and like men. Her hands were demanded to nurse and nurture the white man and his family as domestic servant whether she was technically enslaved or legally free. Her vagina, used for his sexual pleasure, was the gateway to the womb, which was his place of capital investment - the capital investment being the sex act and the resulting child the accumulated surplus, worth money on the market (p.7).Like Jacqueline Jones, Gerda Lerner, Angela Davis, and Paula Giddings before her, Barbara Omolade historicizes the sexual abuse of Black women in slavery and documents its implications for relations between Black and white women in the twentieth - century United States. Omolade's work, however, departs from the aforementioned authors in that she extends her analysis to the issues of African American communities that are legacies of slavery: single motherhood, racism, color prejudice and poverty. She asserts rightly that, [t]o be Black and poor (today) is the current version of being Black and a slave (p.38). She delineates more than merely a relationship between past and present; indeed she opens a door on to the present through which she takes her reader from the past continually explicating how the one has been defined by the other. Omolade not only challenges white society's construction of the African American world, she also challenges the patriarchal structures, traditions, anti - intellectualism and homophobia of the African American community. In this realm, she tackles the recent controversial Central Park Jogger and Tawana Brawley cases as well as contemporary youth culture, particularly the significance of so - called gangster rap music and the Black community's responsibility and accountability. …Read More
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-01-01
Language: en
Type: book
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Cited By Count: 135
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