Riché Richardson examines how five iconic black women--Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama, and Beyoncé--defy racial stereotypes and construct new national narratives of black womanhood in the United States.

"Emancipation's Daughters examines black women political leaders who have challenged oppressive models of black womanhood since Emancipation, including slavery's assault on the black maternal body reflected in the Aunt Jemima stereotype. In spite of the abjection associated with black womanhood within the slave system of the antebellum era, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman defied it, established prominent public voices, and emerged as leaders and national emblems through their contributions to the struggle for freedom. They established foundations for the emergence of black women political leaders throughout the twentieth century and into the new millennium who have challenged this oppressive script. In the process, they unsettle models of U.S. identity premised on whiteness that have framed white women as the only acceptable national symbols within the conventional patriarchal scripts of national selfhood, and resist the devaluation of black womanhood on the basis of race, class, gender and sexuality"--

In Emancipation's Daughters, Riché Richardson examines iconic black women leaders who have contested racial stereotypes and constructed new national narratives of black womanhood in the United States. Drawing on literary texts and cultural representations, Richardson shows how five emblematic black women—Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama, and Beyoncé—have challenged white-centered definitions of American identity. By using the rhetoric of motherhood and focusing on families and children, these leaders have defied racist images of black women, such as the mammy or the welfare queen, and rewritten scripts of femininity designed to exclude black women from civic participation. Richardson shows that these women's status as national icons was central to reconstructing black womanhood in ways that moved beyond dominant stereotypes. However, these formulations are often premised on heteronormativity and exclude black queer and trans women. Throughout Emancipation's Daughters, Richardson reveals new possibilities for inclusive models of blackness, national femininity, and democracy.

A self-taught young slave astonishes his fellow prisoners by reading aloud the newspaper account of Lincoln s new emancipation proclamation. Based on actual events.

This sequel to 1998's award-winning Lest We Forget chronicles the jubilation and despair of newly freed slaves turned loose, as Frederick Douglass put it, "to the wrath of our infuriated masters." Without land, money or education, former slaves had to fend for themselves in the hostile environment of a vanquished South. Covering the period from the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to the start of the Great Migration, Freedom's Children tells the stories of courageous African-Americans who struggled to construct schools and establish businesses while trying to reunite families scattered by slavery. Even the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau could do little to provide real help. So they learned to make their own opportunities, often in other parts of the country. Extraordinary interactive elements bring the lives of these American heroes into chilling focus. Readers can examine the "Freedman's Third Reader" used to teach former slaves to read, open a change pouch and touch "script" money paid to sharecroppers for use in the company store, peruse an account book from the Freedman's Bank, and much more. Freedom's Children is an unforgettable reading -- and interactive -- experience.

The author participated in the historic Victory Day at Tahrir Square through a surprise Valentine gift from her Egyptian born husband Amr Abdalla. The world of history, politics, cultures and culinary details are woven with dexterity and creativity that makes her narrative a wholesome read.