"Fine reading and a superb resource." —Ms."Highly recommended." —Library Journal"Perkins has chosen the plays well, and her issue-oriented... introduction places the women and their works in a literary and historical context." —Choice"As well as being centered on the black experience, the plays in Black Female Playwrights are centered on the female experience." —Voice Literary Supplement"Perkins' anthology is valuable for a number of reasons... Perkins' book (which includes a bibliography of plays and pageants by black women before 1950 as well as a selected bibliography of critical works) is a major help in providing access to [the world of black drama]." —Theatre JournalThe need to acknowledge these works was the impetus behind this volume. Perkins has selected nineteen plays from seven writers who were among the major dramatizers of the black experience during this early period. As forerunners to the activist black theater of the 1950s and 1960s, these plays represent a critical stage in the development of black drama in the United States.

In the discipline's early days, anthropologists by definition were assumed to be white and male. Women and black scholars were relegated to the... field's periphery. From this marginal place, white feminist anthropologists have successfully carved out an acknowledged intellectual space, identified as feminist anthropology. Unfortunately, the works of black and non-western feminist anthropologists are rarely cited, and they have yet to be respected as significant shapers of the direction and transformation of feminist anthropology. In this volume, Irma McClaurin has collected-for the first time-essays that explore the role and contributions of black feminist anthropologists. She has asked her contributors to disclose how their experiences as black women have influenced their anthropological practice in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and how anthropology has influenced their development as black feminists. Every chapter is a unique journey that enables the reader to see how scholars are made. The writers present material from their own fieldwork to demonstrate how these experiences were shaped by their identities. Finally, each essay suggests how the author's field experiences have influenced the theoretical and methodological choices she has made throughout her career. Not since Diane Wolf's Feminist Dilemmas in the Field or Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend have we had such a breadth of women anthropologists discussing the critical (and personal) issues that emerge when doing ethnographic research.

Black feminist thought has developed in various parts of the academy for over three decades, but has made only minor inroads into archaeological ... theory and practice. Whitney Battle-Baptiste outlines the basic tenets of Black feminist thought and research for archaeologists and shows how it can be used to improve contemporary historical archaeology. She demonstrates this using Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, the WEB Du Bois Homesite in Massachusetts, and the Lucy Foster house in Andover, which represented the first archaeological excavation of an African American home. Her call for an archaeology more sensitive to questions of race and gender is an important development for the field.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book analyzes Black women’s involvement in American political life, focusing on what they did to gain... political power between 1961 and the present, and why, in many cases, they did not succeed. Duchess Harris demonstrates that Black women have tried to gain centrality through their participation in Presidential Commissions, Black feminist organizations, theatrical productions, film adaptations of literature, beauty pageants, electoral politics, and Presidential appointments. She contends that “success” in this area means that the feminist-identified Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus who voted against Clarence Thomas’s appointment would have spoken on behalf of Anita Hill; Senator Carol Moseley Braun would have won re-election; and Shirley Sherrod wouldn’t have been forced to resign from her USDA position. Harris contends that if this is truly a post-racial America, there should be no apprehension to discuss issues concerning racism at a national level.

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not... widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a superbly crafted and revolutionary book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon.

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not... widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.

Why are there so few Black filmmakers who control their own work? Why are there scarcely any Black women behind the camera? What happens to Black... filmmakers when they move from independent production to the mainstream? What does it mean for whites to control Black images and their distribution globally? And, was it always so? Could it be different? In this vivid portrait of their historic and present-day contributions, Jesse Rhines explores the roles African American men and women have played in the motion picture business from 1915 to the present. He illuminates his discussion by carefully linking the history of early Black filmmaking to the current success of African American filmmakers and examines how African Americans have been affected by changes that have taken place in the industry as a whole. He focuses on the crucial role of distribution companies, the difficulty of raising money for production, the compromises that directors and writers must make to get funding, and the effect of negative, sensationalistic images on the Black community. Rhines surveys significant eras in film history and their impact on African Americans, from the silent era through the emergence of the Black-owned Lincoln Motion Picture Company, and the later introduction of sound, to the postwar era, the antitrust suit against Paramount Pictures, the introduction of television, and blaxploitation movies. Rhines interviews many well-known directors, including Spike Lee and Reginald Hudlin, and producer Grace Blake, giving readers an inside look at how deal-making does--or does not--work.

The defining work of the Black Arts Movement, Black Fire is at once a rich anthology and an extraordinary source document. Nearly 200 selections,... including poetry, essays, short stories, and plays, from over 75 cultural critics, writers, and political leaders, capture the social and cultural turmoil of the 1960s. In his new introduction, Amiri Baraka reflects nearly four decades later on both the movement and the book.

Novelist Shannon Burke earned stunning reviews for his debut book, Safelight, and now he returns with the same minimalist intensity in this arresting... follow-up. Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-'90s New York. It is a ground's eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, unhinged medics, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic's struggle to balance his desire to help against his own growing callousness. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.

Poetry. Asian Studies. Translated from the Korean by Naoshi Koriyama and Elizabeth Ogata. Chong, one of South Korea's most famous poets, has received... all the major literary awards of his country. Take two newly-wed Koreans surprised by war, carried off, one as a comfort woman, one as a factory slave. Let them find each other in Hiroshima just before the bomb drops. Let the man devote himself to the care of a woman blinded by that sudden glare. And you have a marvel of a book.

'Black Folk Here and There' was part of a larger project that the author began entitled 'Coping and Co-optation.' The purpose of the project was to... conduct an 'analysis of the values and symbols that have emerged within Black communities in the Diaspora and to relate them to the 'coping' process at various periods in history and in diverse places where ecological and economic contexts present quite different options. This book is a result. Crucial in the African American's coping process has been their identification, over a time span of more than two centuries, with ancient Egypt and Ethiopia as symbols of black initiative and success long before their enslavement on the plantations of the New World. Great myths are always part of group-coping strategies. The book begins with an examination of Nile Valley civilizations, after a brief discussion of 'The Ambivalent Exiles' from Africa who found themselves evolving as part of North American societies.

Twelve remarkable folktales, culled from the black experience in Africa and America, are freshly retold in the thoroughly original voice of Julius... Lester. Arranged by topic — Origins, Love, Heroes, and People — the tales combine universal themes and uncanny wisdom. Though some of these stories have been around for centuries and many were passed down by slaves, Julius Lester's urban expressiveness and Tom Feeling's spirited illustrations give them continued resonance for today's audience.

Thousands of people in Alberta and Montana speak Blackfoot, an Algonquian language. But the numbers are diminishing and the survival of Blackfoot is in... some danger. To help preserve the language while it is still in daily use, Donald G. Frantz and Norma Jean Russell collaborated on the Blackfoot Dictionary, published in 1989 to widespread acclaim and later revised in 1995. Blackfoot Grammar, the companion volume to the dictionary, has now also been updated with a second edition. The changes made to each chapter reflect new approaches refined through years of teaching experience. New chapters on 'Numbers and Enumeration' and 'Translating from English to Blackfoot' have been added, as well as new exercises and two new appendixes describing the phonetics of Blackfoot and the design of the alphabet.This second edition of Blackfoot Grammar will be a welcome update not only for those who wish to learn the language, but for all those with an interest in Native Studies and North American linguistics.

This collection of powerful stories reveals the complex and wondrous world of the Blackfoot nation in the nineteenth century. The thirty tales... transcribed by George Bird Grinnell provide an intimate look into Blackfoot culture and philosophy and remind us of tribal values to be upheld and taught. Classic tales of adventure speak of deeds accomplished, and cultural heroes roam across an arresting Native landscape of legend and history. Ancient stories, captured in oral tradition, cast the shadow of the Blackfoot people far into the past and provide foundation and meaning for their lives in the present. The final section of this book is an insightful overview of the history and culture of the Blackfoot Nation. First published in 1892, Blackfoot Lodge Tales is based on George Bird Grinnell’s personal interactions with the Blackfoot people. A member of the Blackfeet Tribe and a historian, Thedis Berthelson Crowe provides an indigenous perspective of the Blackfoot Lodge Tales in her new introduction to this edition. Her great-great grandfather, William Russell, served as the Blackfoot interpreter for Grinnell.

   Three heroic women whose stories, in the words of Margaret Walker, "every woman, man, and child should know": Ellen Craft, the daring runaway... Georgia slave who used her freedom to serve the cause of abolition; Ida B. Wells, th firebrand journalist whose crusade against lynching awakened the consciousness of a nation; and Mary Church Terrell, a gifted and untiring leader in the movement for suffrage, civil rights, and world peace. Through painstaking research, Sterling not only produces a fascinating account of three outstanding leaders; she also documents the role hitherto "faceless, nameless millions of African-American women" have played in shaping our culture and history. Reflecting and connecting the historical struggle of the years 1826 through 1954, Black Foremothers will captivate and inspire readers, young and old.