The Face of Our Past

Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present

Author: Kathleen Thompson
Secondary Author: Hilary Austin
ISBN: 9780253336354

Ordinary black women, more than any other group in America, have been left out of history. As Darlene Clark Hine points out in her introduction to this powerful and affecting book, "disseminating a visual history is more important with Black women, perhaps, than with any other single segment of the American population. We know all too well what this society believes black women look like. The stereotypes abound, from the Mammy to the maid, from the tragic mulatto to the dark temptress. America's perceptions of Black women are colored by a host of derogatory images and assumptions that proliferated in the aftermath of slavery and, with some permutations, exist even today. We have witnessed the distortion of the image of black women in movies and on television. We have seen black women's faces and bodies shamed and exploited. What we have not seen is the simple truth of their lives. This book will help to eradicate, or at least to dislodge, the many negative and dehumanizing stereotypes

Publisher: Indiana University Press
Publish Date: 1999

Subjects: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: African-American/Black Studies)