About the Book:
Koritha Mitchell analyzes canonical texts by and about African American women to lay bare the hostility these women face as they invest in traditional domesticity. Instead of the respectability and safety granted white homemakers, Black women endure pejorative labels, racist governmental policies, attacks on their citizenship, and aggression meant to keep them in "their place." Tracing how African Americans define and redefine success in a nation determined to deprive them of it, Mitchell plumbs the works of Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, and others. These artists honor Black homes from slavery and post-Emancipation through the Civil Rights era to "post-racial" America. Mitchell follows Black families asserting their citizenship in domestic settings while the larger society and culture marginalize and attack them, not because they are deviants or failures but because they meet American standards.
About the Author:
Koritha Mitchell is author of
Living with Lynching (U of Illinois Press, 2011), which won book awards from the American Theatre and Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. An associate professor of English at Ohio State University, Mitchell is also editor of the Broadview Edition of Frances E. W. Harper's 1892 novel
Iola Leroy. She has lectured at the Library of Congress, and her commentary has appeared in outlets such as
CNN,
Good Morning America, Bitch,
Huffington Post,
Rolling Stone, and NPR's
Morning Edition. Follow her
@ProfKori.
About Brittney Cooper:
Brittney Cooper is Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. Dr. Cooper is the author of
Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (U of Illinois Press, 2017), winner of the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Prize for Best Book in U.S. Intellectual History. She is also author of the
New York Times Bestselling
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (St. Martin's Press, 2018). Professor Cooper has been named to
The Root 100 multiple times, most recently in 2018. She is a frequent commentator for
MSNBC and her work has been featured in the
New York Times,
Time Magazine, the
Washington Post,
BET,
Essence Magazine,
The Root and many other publications. Follow her
@ProfessorCrunk.
