Table of Contents

1. The Politics of Black Feminist Thought 2. Defining Black Feminist Thought 3. Work, Family, and Black Women's Oppression 4. Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images 5. The Power of Self-Definition 6. Black Women and Motherhood 7. Rethinking Black Women's Activism 8. The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood 9. Sexual Politics and Black Women's Relationships 11. Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

About the Author

Patricia Hill Collins is Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She had published many articles in professional journals and edited volumes. Since the publication of Black Feminist Thought in 1990, she has published Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, (co-edited with Margaret Andersen), She is also the author of Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (1998).

Reviews

The author discusses how knowledge can foster African-American women's empowerment. In line with her own deepened understanding of the issues since the first edition, she emphasizes Black feminist thought's purpose in fostering both empowerment and conditions of social justice, provides a more complex analysis of oppression, and places greater stress on the connections between knowledge and power relations. New themes include the nation as a form of oppression, as well as a transnational, global dimension. Topics are organized under the headings of the social construction of Black feminist thought, core themes, and Black Feminism, knowledge, and power.