When God Lost Her Tongue

Janell Hobson is Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA.

"From Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, this is a book for anyone interested in the politics of Black female representation across the arts. In accessible language and through cogent analysis, Janell Hobson’s When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination explores African Diasporic women’s lives as represented by others and by themselves through paintings, film, novels, music and poetry, to vivify what it means, and has always meant, to be Black and female under colonial eyes. The result is a text as freeing as it is edifying for Black women of yesteryear as of today."Myriam J. A. Chancy, HBA Chair in the Humanities, Scripps College, USA, and author of Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony and Transmission in the African Diaspora"Janell Hobson's When God Lost Her Tongue is an epic Black feminist story, one that analyzes how Black Women artists and writers engage the past in order to imagine more liberatory futures. With deft analysis and dazzling insights, Hobson takes across space, African Diasporic traditions, and academic disciplines to reveal how Black women theorize their relationship to history and, by doing so, opens up new possibilities and genealogies for our understanding of the Divine, the Black Body, and Freedom itself." Salamishah Tillet, Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing, Rutgers University, USA, and author of In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece"When God Lost Her Tongue is imperative. It clearly and profoundly demonstrates the liberating power of the Black feminist imagination."Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist "This book is essential reading for any instructor interested in expansive learning, as it allows students to imagine beyond the epistemological confines of a Western teaching of history. It is replete with stories that tempt readers to explore further. A whole course could be designed around this book. I recommend its inclusion in reading packets for courses in Black studies, history, and gender studies."Ejim Dyke, RGWS: A Feminist Review

• Introduction; Prelude; Chapter 1 A Meditation on Black Feminist Divinity; Chapter 2 Reframing Portraits of Black Womanhood; Chapter 3 Revolving Doors of No Return; Chapter 4 Cultural Currency and the Value of Harriet Tubman; Chapter 5 To Play the Queen, To Embody the Goddess; Postlude; Epilogue