Beyond the Black Lady

Lisa B. Thompson is an associate professor in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the play Single Black Female.

Received an honorable mention for the National Women's Studies Association's Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, 2010.“[Thompson] finds that some Black women are pioneering new ways to be and to give voice to a more fully actualized, human, female persona. This new woman is long overdue.”--Diverse: Issues in Higher Education "In refreshingly clear prose, Lisa B. Thompson renders a complex and nuanced reading of black middle-class women from both fiction and real life. This study makes an important intervention in the discourse on what has heretofore been an under-theorized subject."--E. Patrick Johnson, author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South "A path-breaking, cogently argued, bold study of the ways in which black women writers and public figures have engaged, confronted, resisted, or overturned prevailing notions of black middle-class women's sexuality. This book makes a powerful contribution to debates in race studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, and literary and cultural studies."--Valerie Smith, author of Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings

• Acknowledgments   ixIntroductionBeyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class   1Part 1: Performing Identity1. Spectacle of the Respectable: Anita Hill and the Problem of Innocence   212. Staging Black Female Desire: The Drama of Race, Class, and Sexuality   433. Black Ladies and Black Magic Women:Independent Film and Black Sexuality   72Part 2: Refashioning the Black Female Self4. Narrating Sexuality in Contemporary African American Autobiography   975. Sex, Travel, and the Single African American Girl: Andrea Lee's Sarah Phillips   118Epilogue   137Notes   141Index   175