The Root Interview: Beverly Guy-Sheftall on Black Feminism

The noted Spelman College scholar and author talks to The Root about what Oprah should be doing, Michelle Obama and why the president is a feminist.

The Root Interview: Beverly Guy-Sheftall on Black Feminism
by Akoto Ofori-Atta

Known for her eccentricity and boldness, Beverly Guy-Sheftall has never been scared to take the brave action necessary for change. (With her fondness for bright colors and head-to-toe leopard prints, she's also not scared of taking fashion risks.) A pioneer of black feminism in the 1960s, she took the helm of black feminist studies, raging against strong sentiments that positioned black feminism as obsolete once black women gained access to the labor force. Since then she has worked tirelessly to institute black feminist studies as a legitimate discipline, and continues to do so as the founder and director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, where she is also the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies.

An accomplished and well-respected scholar, Guy-Sheftall has co-edited and written books that continue to serve as the cornerstone of black feminism, most notably Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought and Still Brave, the follow-up to the anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave. She also co-founded SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, which has become a critical resource for black women's studies.

Now, as the president of the National Women's Studies Association, Guy-Sheftall has succeeded in adding color to what has historically been a mostly white organization. Under her leadership, issues around feminists of color have permeated the organization's discourse, creating a more inclusive space for women's-studies scholars.

As the end of her two-year term as president draws near, Guy-Sheftall sat with The Root at the 2010 NWSA conference to discuss her role with the organization, the importance of black feminism and the lessons she hopes to pass on to future feminists of color.

Read the Full Interview @ The Root

For Colored Girls, Is Tyler Perry's Film Enuf?

For Colored Girls, Is Tyler Perry's Film Enuf?
Courtney Young | November 12, 2010

What is the price paid when a director widely considered to be anti-feminist interprets a beloved black feminist text for film? Can a piece as endearing as Ntozake Shange's 1975 classic choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enuf reach its full cinematic potential outside the hands of a black female director? When movie mogul Tyler Perry first announced he would be reviving the celebrated text for the screen, many fans of the original production reacted with dismay, worry, even anger. A deft combination of poetry, music and movement, the choreopoem gives life to the voices of seven unnamed women distinguished on stage only by a singular color of dress. The piece allows each woman to relay her story frankly, at times through a collective narration, airing a host of issues that affect black women's lives—rape, abortion, domestic abuse and child murder, but also love, sex, and friendship. Would the complexity of black women's lives and voices survive in Perry's hands?

Before the film even hit theatres on November 5, reviews were running the gamut. At The Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt eviscerated the film [1] as "too crude and stagy for Shange's transformative evocation of black female life." New York magazine's David Edelstein [2] excoriated Perry's translation, concluding, "He has taken Shange's landmark poem cycle…cut it up, and sewn its bloody entrails into a tawdry, masochistic soap opera that exponentially ups the Precious ante." But not all reviewers found the film to be an unmitigated disaster. Mark Anthony Neal, a professor at Duke University, writing for The Loop, asserts that [3], "The film's commercial success marks one of the visible moments for mainstream Black Feminism, within a national culture that has been largely ignorant of Black feminist writing and art."

The $20.1 million raked in over opening weekend undoubtedly makes Perry's first R-rated film a financial success. But its initial popularity in no way mitigates Perry's ultimate transgression, committed by so many when adapting classic works: failing to present the characters as they are, rather than as he wants them to be. Perry's refusal to stretch the boundaries of black female expression, which is key to Shange's text, beyond the scope of his own familiarity indicts his direction.

A number of recurring themes inform or, at times, dictate the actions of Perry's female protagonists across his films, with religious messaging being one of them. His choice to center For Colored Girls on this theme is no exception. But Perry fails to fully comprehend Shange's complex portrayal of the ways that black women find God. Shange articulates a spirituality that is fluid and introspective, even divinely feminine. Religion is never centrally cast in the text; spirituality is rather understood as a vehicle through which black women communicate with each other and with themselves. Arguably, the most widely quoted moment in For Colored Girls is when the "lady in red," one of the most memorable characters of the production, asserts, "I found god in myself & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely."

Read the Full Review @ The Nation

Book Review: Ain't I a Feminist?: African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom

special to NewBlackMan

Ain’t I a Feminist?:
African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom
by Aaronette White
(State University of New York Press, 2008)
Reviewed by Chantel K. Liggett

***

In Ain’t I a Feminist, Aaronette White proves that progressive feminist thought and action is not foreign to present-day African American men. Even more important, however, is the way in which she helps to “demystify the process” leading these men to, and sustaining their investments in, various forms of lived feminism (199). While brilliantly organizing the narratives of the twenty self-identified feminist, profeminist, or anti-sexist men she studied into seven thematic chapters, providing helpful contextualizations and frameworks within which to understand their experiences, the evaluation she does is so fluid and congruent with the men’s experiences, it undeniably gives their words and thought processes precedence over any theory or analysis thereof. As she puts it, “how men learn to confront patriarchy and become feminists can be understood through the narratives of those who are living the experience”(193). In permitting her subjects to lead by example, White provides what can be thought of as a blueprint for the cultivation of black male feminism.

The key ingredients of lived black male feminism are “humility, emotional openness, empathy, nurturing, dialog, accountability, mutuality, power sharing, and nonviolence,” offers White, focusing on the way feminist values are internalized and continually practiced on a day-to-day basis by the men in her study (199). Beyond questioning societal structures and practices like marriage, monogamy, religion, Black Power nationalist movements, violence, workplace gender dynamics, female domesticity, homophobia/heterosexism, and authoritative or removed fatherhood, these men reflect critically on their humanity, personal development, and relationships; White centers these processes as providing a wealth of knowledge about the implementation of feminist thought. Quoting James Baldwin as saying, “Not only was I not born to be a slave: I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave-master,” she points to the importance of feminist men striving to occupy social positions more meaningful than those of dominators (59).

More than once White uses the phrase “vigilant practices” to describe the behavioral work of feminist men. Giving credit where credit is due, she does not overlook negative bouts in the men’s feminist development, which she calls “contamination” experiences, and outlines the difficultly with which men maintain feminist lifestyles. As one of her participants says, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing one has “already made it” as a feminist, when feminism is really a continual process of revaluation and renewal (122). Another participant offers that Black male feminists also sometimes (accidentally or purposely) revert to the “male thing” (104). Elaborating on this, White states, “Feminist Black men’s use of male dominant behaviors can be subtle, unconscious, and used as a coping device when they feel threatened” (101). Given that feminism requires a radical resocialization of males, she stresses that male feminists need not be flawless, and that it would be unrealistic to expect them to. “Egalitarianism requires not perfection but effort mixed with humility,” she says, demonstrating the importance of willingness in feminist development (96). A large portion of such willingness takes the form of speaking about, listening to, and being perceptive of both ‘larger’ issues and everyday occurrences regarding gender; what White chronicles the power of in Ain’t I a Feminist is the recurrence of such seemingly simply acts. Furthermore, in “directing attention to these practices,” White “counters the popular tendency to view a person’s gender identity as fixed or as developed primarily through childhood socialization,” instead naming it an ongoing, conscious process that individuals have a large degree of control over(84).

Aaronette White further commits to detailing and addressing the patterns of specific environments and resources that have had the biggest influence on her subjects’ feminist development. Demonstrating that becoming a feminist is not something one does alone, White seeks to pinpoint what has led these men in that direction, coming to the solid conclusion that intimate friendships or romances with feminist women and institutional settings that support feminist thinking are the key portals through which they gain access and further their development. Speaking of the importance of his romantic and sexual attraction to a feminist woman in aiding his feminist development, one subject says, “I don’t believe many men will put much effort into trying to correct themselves if the person who is trying to correct them is not someone who they are committed to and who is important to them” (89). As White highlights, many of the men in her study posited feminist-thinking women as strong, firm, and challenging, prompting, if not forcing, them to reevaluate patriarchal beliefs and practices. In this way, White emphasizes the importance of female feminist thinkers opening up to and working with men, and vice versa, as opposed to having separatist movements. Friendships with feminist women offer men “insider perspectives” (112), she says, and such relationships frequently provide “constructive criticism,” “practicing ground,” “safe spaces” for feminist growth (116). Furthermore, simply being around other feminists helped her subjects legitimate or free their potential male feminist identities, in providing a “mutually understood and shared relational reality that affirms another’s identity” (121).

The men’s reliance on institutional encouragement and support of feminist thought is most evident in Chapter Four, titled “Turning Points,” in which White charts the men’s substantial shifts in their thoughts about or relationship to feminism. “Their exposure to open-minded and radical, social justice-oriented institutions,” most often universities, “and their active participation to support racial and economic injustice often provided the foundation for subsequent feminist views and practices,” she observes (87). White utilizes these findings by challenging black feminists and their communities to recreate such environments where they are lacking, to facilitate the development of feminist consciousnesses in willing boys and men who would not otherwise have access. She boldly recommends the development women’s studies curricula in elementary and high schools and calls for a multiplicity of community campaigns that would allow black men to develop feminist consciousness in settings closer to home, providing her readers a lasting challenge.

Notably, aside from chronicling the paths of twenty black men to feminism, White’s groundbreaking work demonstrates effortlessly that “when one is pressured to view one’s humanity in terms of ‘being a man’ or ‘being a woman,’ what it means to be human is lost, truncated, stereotyped, and taken less seriously” (120). What these men gain from their commitment to feminism is indefinable but shines through their stories, impossible to ignore. In giving public voice to these men in the way she has, White sets forth a compelling model for other present-day as well as future men to grab on to.

***

Chantel K. Liggett is an undergraduate at Duke University pursuing a Women's Studies Major and Study of Sexualities Certificate. She is currently conducting research on 'queer' resistance to concrete categories of identity by Dutch nationals and Surinamese migrants in Amsterdam

Roll Call!

From NewsOne.com

Left of Black: FEMINISM DESERVES MORE THAN A ROLL-CALL VOTE
By Mark Anthony Neal

After months of debate, Hillary Clinton's name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO next week, allowing for a roll-call vote. Though the outcome of the roll-call vote is presumably already known--Senator Obama earned a majority of the delegates in May--Clinton supporters have argued that the formal process will allow her supporters some catharsis-emotional release-in light of the senator's history making campaign.

Senator Clinton and her supporters have strongly linked aspects of her campaign to feminist sensibilities. One wonders how those women, whose feminism is pitched to critical issues like poverty, childcare, domestic and sexual violence, inadequate healthcare and inequitable wages, will experience catharsis through a merely symbolic vote?

Read the Full Essay @

NBM Book Notes: Ms. Magazine Reviews 'Black Male Outsider'

from Ms. Magazine

New Wave Man
Review by Layli Phillips

Black Male Outsider:
Teaching as a Pro-Feminist Man—A Memoir
By Gary L. Lemons
SUNY Press

WHEN I STOP TO THINK ABOUT the successes of feminism, one of the most under-recognized yet remarkable is its production of feminist men. Male feminists prove that the transformation of society is truly achievable and not simply some utopian pipe dream or theoretical abstract. Such men are still relatively few and far between, but as Lemons proves in Black Male Outsider, a groundswell is in the making. This growing wave of men who identify with feminism is, on the one hand, an artifact of a generation that has grown up with feminism. On the other hand, it is a demonstration of the life-changing power of feminist thought—in this case, black feminist thought—on not just women, but on human beings of any gender.

After the manner of bell hooks, whom Lemons names as the biggest influence on his feminist development, this memoir is a captivating mixture of “professional” and “confessional” approaches. This style allows Lemons to interweave theory and autobiography with the personal narratives of his students, mostly but not exclusively white and female, who have been transformed by their encounter with black feminist thought delivered through the unlikely voice of a self-styled “professor of feminism.” By confronting white students about white identity, students of color about “passing,” and all students about the intersections of racism and sexuality, Lemons stewards his classes through profound shifts in thinking and empathy. In the end, he emerges not only as one of the most influential black male feminists, but also as a “wounded healer” of no small magnitude.

Read the Full Book Review @

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Gary L. Lemons is Visiting Professor of English at the University of South Florida.

Hillary vs. Barack: What's a Black (Male) Feminist to Do?

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Hillary vs. Barack: What's a Black (Male) Feminist to Do?
by Mark Anthony Neal

That Ms. Clinton is still married to a man involved in the most visible sexual harassment case in American history, does little to enhance her viability as the candidate that could more adequately address gender inequality in our society. Where was Ms. Clinton when her husband rode workfare programs--the premise being that women who are home taking care of young children are not really working--to his reelection in 1996? In contrast to Senator Clinton though, what has Mr. Obama done, really, to justify the large number of women supporters that he has drawn to his campaign--other than be a tall, handsome, articulate and not particularly threatening version of black masculinity?

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com