"Chrisena Coleman shares the wisdom she has collected in this heartwarming, witty, and unique book brimming over with long-standing traditions, age-old myths, and home remedies that have been passed down from mothers to daughters generation after generation. Some tales date back as far as slavery, others are from contemporary mamas like herself ... but each one is fun, entertaining, and grounded in African-American history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"Bart Landry's Black Working Wives is a very comprehensive account of the family revolution in America. I learned a great deal reading this thoughtful book. Landry’s discussion of the dual career marriages of black women decades before the feminist revolution, and the lessons they provide not only for understanding dynamic changes in American families but also for anticipating the future of the modern two-career family, is insightful and persuasive."—William Julius Wilson, author of The Bridge over the Racial Divide "Bart Landry's Black Working Wives is a perceptive analysis that connects the historical circumstances of Black women to the transformation of modern American family structures. This is an important contribution which should engage general readers, students, and public policy leaders and deepen our understanding of the origins and value of the dual career family."—Darlene Clark Hine, author of Speak Truth to Power "Landry blends history, demography, and contemporary social analysis to illuminate the form and function of African-American families over time. He does a particularly good job of describing how, decades ago, middle-class black families prefigured the relatively egalitarian, two-wage earner households that are so common today. An incisive and rewarding book."—Jacqueline Jones, author of American Work "This is first-rate, engaging, provocative, solid scholarship. I enthusiastically recommend it!"—Walter R. Allen, University of California, Los Angeles "Landry has made a significant contribution to an existing body of literature on the family and race--and, more important, he has advanced a position that is not present in that literature."—Troy Duster, University of California, Berkeley, and New York University "A very important book that contributes vitally to the small but growing literature on African American women and their agency in making lives for themselves and their families and in shaping American society."—Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Colby College

Long before the 1970s and the feminist revolution that shattered traditional notions of the family, black women in America had already accomplished their own revolution. Bart Landry's groundbreaking study adds immeasurably to our accepted concepts of "traditional" and "new" families: Landry argues that black middle-class women in two-parent families were practicing an egalitarian lifestyle that was envisioned by few of their white counterparts until many decades later. The primary transformation of the American family, Landry says, took place when nineteenth-century industrialization brought about the separation of home and workplace. Only then did the family we call traditional, in which the husband goes out to work while the wife stays at home, become the centerpiece of white middle-class ideology. Black women, excluded from this model of respectability, embraced a threefold commitment to family, community, and career. They embodied the notion that employment outside the home was the route to more equality in the home, and that work was worth pursuing for reasons other than economic survival. With a careful and convincing mix of biography, historical records, and demographic data, Landry shows how these black pioneers of the dual-career marriage created a paradigm for other women seeking to escape the cult of domesticity and thus foreshadowed the second great family transformation. If the two-parent nuclear family is to persist beyond the twentieth century, it may be because of what we can learn from these earlier women about an ideology of womanhood that combines the private and public spheres.

In Sensuous Knowledge, Minna Salami draws on Africa-centric, feminist-first and artistic traditions to help us rediscover inclusive and invigorating ways of experiencing the world afresh. Combining the playfulness of a storyteller with the insight of a social critic, the book pries apart the systems of power and privilege that have dominated ways of thinking for centuries – and which have led to so much division, prejudice and damage. And it puts forward a new, sensuous, approach to knowledge: one grounded in a host of global perspectives – from Black Feminism to personal narrative, pop culture to high art, Western philosophy to African mythology – together comprising a vision of hope for a fragmented world riven by crisis. Through the prism of this new knowledge, Salami offers fresh insights into the key cultural issues that affect women’s lives. How are we to view Sisterhood, Motherhood or even Womanhood itself? What is Power and why do we conceive of Beauty? How does one achieve Liberation? She asks women to break free of the prison made by ingrained male-centric biases, and build a house themselves – a home that can nurture us all. Sensuous Knowledge confirms Minna Salami as one the most important spokespeople of today, and the arrival of a blistering new literary voice.

Over the last century, the social and economic roles played by African women have evolved dramatically. Long confined to home and field, overlooked by their menfolk and missionaries alike, African women worked, thought, dreamed, and struggled. They migrated to the cities, invented new jobs, and activated the so-called informal economy to become Africa's economic and social focal point. As a result, despite their lack of education and relatively low status, women are now Africa's best hope for the future. This sweeping and innovative book is the first to reconstruct the full history of women in sub-Saharan Africa. Tracing the lot of African women from the eve of the colonial period to the present, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch explores the stages and forms of women's collective roles as well as their individual emancipation through revolts, urban migrations, economic impacts, social claims, political strength, and creativity. Comparing case studies drawn from throughout the region, she sheds light on issues ranging from gender to economy, politics, society, and culture. Utilizing an impressive array of sources, she highlights broad general patterns without overlooking crucial local variations. With its breadth of coverage and clear analysis of complex questions, this book is destined to become a standard text for scholars and students alike.

Sub-Saharan Africa has not joined the global demographic transition. Africa's eventual transition to fertility decline may depend more than it has elsewhere on functional changes in the family and changes in the family structure.