Critical appropriations : African American women and the construction of transnational identity
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Critical appropriations : African American women and the construction of transnational identity
（Southern literary studies）
Louisiana State University Press, c2014
- : [cloth]
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-180) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
From the novels of Toni Morrison to the music of Beyoncé Knowles, the cultural prevalence of a transnational black identity, as created by African American women, is more than a product of geographic mobility. Rather, as author Simone C. Drake shows, these constructions illuminate our understanding of a chronically marginalized demographic. In Critical Appropriations, Drake contends that these fluid and hetero-geneous characterizations of black females arise from multiple creative outlets - literature, film, and music videos - and reflect African Ameri-can women's evolving concept of home, community, gender, and family.
Through a close examination of Toni Morrison's Paradise, Danzy Senna's Caucasia, Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Erna Brodber's Louisiana, and Kasi Lemmons's film Eve's Bayou, as well as Beyoncé Knowles's B-Day album and music-video collaboration with Shakira, ""Beautiful Liar,"" Drake reveals how concepts of hybridity - whether positioned as créolité, Candomblé, négritude, Latinidad, or Brasilidade - are appropriated in each work of art as a way of challenging the homogeneous paradigm of black cultural studies. This redefined notion of identity enables African American women to embrace a more complex, transnational blackness that is not only more liberating but also more pertinent to their experiences.
Drawing from this borderless exchange of ideas and a richer concept of self, Critical Appropriations offers a rewarding reconsideration of the creative implications for African American women, mapping new directions in black women's studies.
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