What does the tradition of marriage mean for people who have historically been deprived of its legal status? Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts such as Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Anglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot--what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. She demonstrates the ways in which black women appropriated this novelistic device as a means of expressing and reclaiming their own identity. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other. Much more than a period study, The Coupling Convention spans the period from 1853 to 1948, addressing the vital questions of gender, subjectivity, race, and the canon that inform literary study today. In this original work, duCille offers a new paradigm for reading black women's fiction.

Statistics state that 70 Percent of Black women are single. And many believe that it’s because Black women can’t find a “good” Black man. However, what’s keeping Black women single isn’t a shortage of “good” Black men it’s the fact that most Black women have learned a life paradigm from her mother that prevents her from having a successful relationship with any man. In this eBook Shawn James explains all the historical, economic, political and social reasons leading to many Black women being single and how many of the approaches Black women have learned growing up from their mothers and grandmothers will keep them single and their daughters single in some cases for the rest of their lives.

What''s Wrong with Black Women? is one black man''s story of the bitter downside of black romance. After years of research on the Internet, and a life time of varied experiences pursuing, dating, romancing, and engaging in verbal and mental conflict with black women, the author Monte Maddox, presents a non-stop, Hip-Hop, in your face rollercoaster ride! The thin line between love and hate has been crossed and then some! The faint of heart or ultra sensitive would do well to avoid this frenetic mixture of rage, passion, street-life observations, and at times, tragic revelations about what the author says are bad black women who are destroying good black men. Maddox'' sincere and brutal frankness cuts through the reader like a chainsaw through Swiss cheese! ! If you can''t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If there''s a "kitchen" of controversy about black women, What''s Wrong with Black Women? is cooking up one heck of a main course! It''s one book that surely would never be in Oprah''s book of the month club! HTTP://DIABLOBANYON.TRIPOD.COM

Overview coming soon

Christian theology at its core is a story about someone being in trouble. In response to this trouble, the triune God intervenes. God identifies with those in trouble, walking with them through the experience. Yet, the God of Christian theology goes a step further. God prevails over trouble. God is an overcomer. Black women with breast cancer identify with this God. They also see themselves in this theological narrative. They see themselves in the midst of troubles, troubles like racism, poverty and environmental exposures that create the disease affecting their bodies. They see the troubles of breast cancer, their biological disposition towards more aggressive cancers, later stage diagnoses, poorer prognoses, diminished quality of care and worse outcomes. Black women also palpably feel the troubles breast cancer brings like fear, physical disfigurement, social isolation, being stereotyped for treatment decisions, abandonment and even death. Black women feel the myriad troubles breast cancer brings. But, Black women also know God in their troubles. They know an active God who identifies with and prioritizes their needs. They know this God, through scripture and experience, as God who puts them front and center. And because they know God as an overcomer and creative force, they know themselves as overcomers. For with God, their troubles do not last always. Black women with breast cancer construct a cultural theology of breast cancer out of knowing God. Borne out of experiences of the Black Church, womanist theology and their intersectional identities of race, class and gender, this theological investigation, informed by anthropology, examines how Black women construct an ontology of who God is and how God operates and gain a God consciousness that shapes their response to the disease. Using pain, faith and testimony as tools to struggle against breast cancer Black survivors’ theology transforms them from victims of breast cancer to change agents. Out of their lives as survivors comes a theology of complex hope- one cognizant of Black women’s breast cancer disparities, yet oriented towards Black women’s achievement of health in the present and the future– a sufficient hope to sustain Black women through it all.

Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, became known as one of the most militant, anti-white black nationalists of the 1960s Black Power movement. An advocate of Black Cultural Nationalism, Baraka supported the rejection of all things white and western. He helped found and direct the influential Black Arts movement which sought to move black writers away from western aesthetic sensibilities and toward a more complete embrace of the black world. Except perhaps for James Baldwin, no single figure has had more of an impact on black intellectual and artistic life during the last forty years. In this groundbreaking and comprehensive study, the first to interweave Baraka's art and political activities, Jerry Watts takes us from his early immersion in the New York scene through the most dynamic period in the life and work of this controversial figure. Watts situates Baraka within the various worlds through which he travelled including Beat Bohemia, Marxist-Leninism, and Black Nationalism. In the process, he convincingly demonstrates how the 25 years between Baraka's emergence in 1960 and his continued influence in the mid-1980s can also be read as a general commentary on the condition of black intellectuals during the same time. Continually using Baraka as the focal point for a broader analysis, Watts illustrates the link between Baraka's life and the lives of other black writers trying to realize their artistic ambitions, and contrasts him with other key political intellectuals of the time. In a chapter sure to prove controversial, Watts links Baraka's famous misogyny to an attempt to bury his own homosexual past. A work of extraordinary breadth, Amira Baraka is a powerful portrait of one man's lifework and the pivotal time it represents in African-American history. Informed by a wealth of original research, it fills a crucial gap in the lively literature on black thought and history and will continue to be a touchstone work for some time to come.