The essays in this book reveal the diverse ways black women experience and represent sexuality. The contributors highlight the range of tactics that black women use to express their sexual desires and identities. .The authors take not only an interdisciplinary approach, but also an intergenerational one, in conversation with the foremothers of black feminist studies. In addition, the book explores a diverse archive of representations, covering everything from blues to hip-hop, from Crash to Precious, from Sister Souljah to Edwidge Danticat. Revealing that black female sexuality is anything but a black-and-white issue, this collection demonstrates how to appreciate a whole spectrum of subjectivities, experiences, and desires.
The author identifies hostels as sites of public and domestic violence, literal destruction and rebuilding, and as an important node in the spread of HIV/AIDS. He focuses on thirty black migrant women living in an East Rand hostel to map the everyday geographies of South Africa's time of change. By following the lives of these women, he describes spatialized forms of marginalization, impoverishment, infection and disempowerment.