Query From Eileen Boris eboris@virginia.edu 07 Dec 1998
For a course in African American Women's History next term, I'm looking for a novel, autobiography, or memoir post WWII. I'll do Anne Moody if I must, but my colleague teaching US Women's History is using that and Tera Hunter's book, which I'm already using. We really don't want to overlap our reading lists too much! I really want a book that teaches well but is not too long because of assignments as well as 5 additional books.
The course is a one semester survey and I'm using the anthology _Words of Fire_; Hunter _To 'Joy My Freedom_; Terbourg-Penn _African American Women and the Vote_; Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl_; and _Abiding Courage_(on WWII and migration to East Bay). I need to put in my order to the bookstore by Friday! Thanks.
Responses:
Bates, Daisy _The Long Shadow of Little Rock_
Beals Patillo, Melba _Warriors Don't Cry_
Clark-Lewis, Elizabeth _Living In, Living Out: African-American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940_(Smithsonian Press, 1994)
Clark, Septima _Speaking Truth Ready From Within_
Dash, Leon _Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America_ (Plume/Penguin, 1997)...247pp
Davis, Thulani _1959_
Fleming, Cynthia Griggs _Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson
Hill, Anita _Speaking Truth to Power_
hooks, bell _Bone Black: Memories of a Childhood_(Holt, 1996) or: parts of _Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism_
Hull, Gloria T., Ed _Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson: Give Us Each Day_ (Norton, 1984)
Lorde, Audre _Zami_
Mills, Kay _This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer_(Penguin/Plume, 1993) ISBN: o-452-27052-9
Murray, Pauli Anything she wrote
Richardson, Laurel and Verta Taylor, Eds _Feminist Frontiers III_(McGraw Hill, 1993)
Robinson, JoAnn Gibson _Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It_
Shakur, Assata _Assata_ (Her autobio of life in NY Panthers)
Walker, Alice _Meridian_
West, Dorothy _The Wedding_ or _Having Our Say_
Williams, Evelyn _Inadmissible Evidence
Wilson, Midge and Kathy Russell _Divided Sisters: Bridging the Gap Between Black Women and White Women_ (Anchor/Doubleday, 1996)
Women Writers Text and Context series: featuring Alice Walker _Everyday Use_ (Rutgers, 1994)
Other Suggestions:
What about angela davis' autobiography or pearl cleage's novel--what crazy look like on a normal day examines the aids crisis. you might want to use a play like alice childress' one-act florence (black women and the civil rights movement).