Acknowledgments
Introduction: The First Bite
1. “I’m not the vampire he is; I give in return for my taking.” The
Black Female Vampire Figure
in Octavia E. Butler’s Mind of My Mind
2. Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories: Black Female Vampire as a New
American Monomyth
3. Intersectional Disempowerment and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A
Vindication of the Rights of Anita Hill in Octavia E. Butler’s
Fledgling?
4. “She’s not turning. She’s in flux”: The Ability/Disability
System in L.A. Banks’s The Bitten
5. Rehabilitative Logic: Sex Work, Procreation, and Vampires in
Pearl Cleage’s Just Wanna Testify
Afterword: The Final Bite
Bibliography
Kendra R. Parker is assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Hope College.
She Bites Back relocates the image of the black female vampire from
the margins of our imaginations to the center of our consciousness.
Kendra R. Parker reveals how and why the black woman has been
employed to represent some of Western society’s greatest fears and
most passionate desires. Exhilarating scholarship!
*Gregory Jerome Hampton, Howard University*
Parker’s masterful work provides a profound, visionary analysis of
the negative images and stereotypes black women have historically
confronted and overcome in American society. Her insights
illuminate the awesome creativity that’s helped reclaim and protect
black female dignity and identity from poisonous cultural
colonization.
*Fred L. Johnson III III, Hope College*
Parker’s energetic, well-researched book chronicles the creative
and subversive ways black women have written about vampires. Rooted
in history, but firmly aimed at the present and future, Parker’s
research and analysis reveal the deeper meaning behind black
women’s depictions of vampires in myriad forms—and how sometimes
the unhuman can be the most human rendering of all.
*Tananarive Due, University of California, Los Angeles*
Parker wrests the vampire from the throes of the Gothic to reveal
its complex relationship with black women’s bodies. She journeys
from the history of the vampire as a conduit for the fears of a
eurocentric society to the moment when black women writers assume
ownership of the vampire as their own tool of expression.
*Tarshia L. Stanley, St. Catherine University*
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