Query From Renee Romano rromano@wesleyan.edu 10 March 1997
Next fall, I am teaching an upper-level undergraduate research seminar on African-American family history. The class will be cross listed with history, African-American Studies and Women's Studies. I am looking for suggestions on good books and articles the students can read for the class; these do not necessarily have to be historical works--I am particularly interested in suggestions from fields like sociology, anthropology, etc.
Some titles that seem obvious are Gutman's _The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom_; Carol Stuck's _All Our Kin_. Other books I'm thinking of using are Linda Gordon's _Pitied But Not Entitled_; Leon Dash's _Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America_; Brenda Stephenson's _Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South_; Nicholas Lehman's _The Promised Land_; and perhaps Rickie Solinger's _Wake Up Little Susie_.
I was wondering if folks on the list might have other suggestions/ideas.Thanks in advance for your help!
Responses:
Anderson, Karen "African American Families" in Joseph Hawes and Elizabeth Nybakken,eds. _American Families_; also Anderson's _Changing Woman: A History of Racial Ethnic Women in Modern America_
Billingsley, A. _Climbing Jacob's Ladder_
Brent, Linda _Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl_
Brown, Elaine _A Taste of Power_
Carey, Lorene _Black Ice_
Comer, James P., M.D. _Maggie's American Dream: The Life and Times of a Black Family_(NY, Plume, 1989)
Curry, Leonard P. _The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream_(U Chicago Press, 1981)
Fields, Mamie Garvin(with Karen Fields) _Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (1983)
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks _Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920_
Hine, Darlene Clark, Wilma King and Linda Reed, eds. _We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible: A Reader in Black Women's History_
Hine, Darlene Clark , ed. _Black Women in American History_(15 vol. encyclopedia)
Hunter-Gault, Charlayne _In My Place_
Ione, Carole _Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color_(1991)
Jones, Jacqueline _Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow_
Lemke-Santangelo, Gretchen _Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women in the East Bay Community_(Chapel Hill, U of North Carolina Press, 1996)
Leslie, Kent Anderson _Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege_
Lourde, Audre _Zami_
Mills, Kay _The Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer_(1993)
Morrison, Toni _Beloved_
Morton, Patricia _Disfigured Images: The Historical Assault on Afro-American Women_(1991) Esp. Chapter 9
Murray, Pauli _Proud Shoes_
Powers, Dr. Bernard _Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885_
Quadragno, Jill _The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty_(1994)
Rainwater, _The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy_
Shaw, Stephanie _What A Woman Ought to Be and to Do_
Staples, Brent _Parallel Time_
White, Deborah Gray _Aren't I a Woman?_
Williams, _Life on the Color Line_
Other recommendations:
Daughters of the Dust (film by Julie Dash) To Sleep With Anger (film, early 1990s)
Lorraine Hansberry's play _Raisin in the Sun_ August Wilson's plays...e.g. _Fences_; _Joe Turner's Come and Gone_
Web sites: H-Women http://h-net2.msu.edu/~women/bibs
Freedmen's Bureau records: http://www.uky.edu/RGS/AppalCenter/melung.htm WPA interviews, 1930s http:// www.uky.edu/RGS/AppalCenter/
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