Sweetwater

Robin M. Boylorn is Assistant Professor of Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication at The University of Alabama, where she teaches and writes about the intersections of race, gender/sex, class, and sexuality. Her primary research interests focus on the lived and storied experiences of black women, social identity, diversity, and critical auto/ethnography. In addition to academic publications she also writes feminist and cultural critiques as a member of the Crunk Feminist Collective.

«Robin M. Boylorn takes you intimately and viscerally into her life growing up and into the lives of the southern black rural women in her hometown. You hear women whispering and talking women-talk, see them worshiping and getting the spirit, smell the ham hocks cooking, sense the passion and pain of their daily romantic and family lives, feel their hearts beating and bleeding, share their resentment and love for themen who don’t always do them right, and finally understand deeply the resilience it takes to get by no matter what challenges are thrown at you. Dr. Boylorn joins the creative genius of a Toni Morrison to the scholarship on black women’s lives, exemplifying the ethnographic eye/I and ethical consciousness of the best of qualitative research. This is a stunning autoethnographic and narrative tour de force that will captivate students and scholars alike.» (Carolyn Ellis, Professor of Sociology and Communication Studies, Universityof South Florida, and Author of ‘Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work’)