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The Sexual Lives of Black Women, In Their Own Words
In a culture driven by sexual and racial imagery, very few honest conversations about race, gender, and sexuality actually take place. In their absence, commonly held perceptions of black women as teenage mothers, welfare recipients, mammies, or exotic sexual playthings remain unchanged. For fear that telling their stories will fulfill society's implicit expectations about their sexuality, most black women have retreated into silence. Tricia Rose seeks to break this silence and jump-start a dialogue by presenting, for the first time, the sexual testimonies of black women. Spanning a broad range of ages, levels of education, and socioeconomic backgrounds, twenty women, in their own words, talk with startling honesty about sex, love, family, relationships, and intimacy. Their stories dispel prevailing myths and provide revealing insights into how black women navigate the complex terrain of sexuality. Nuanced, rich, and powerful, Longing to Tell will be required reading for anyone interested in issues of race and gender.
In a culture driven by sexual and racial imagery, very few honest conversations about race, gender, and sexuality actually take place. In their absence, commonly held perceptions of black women as teenage mothers, welfare recipients, mammies, or exotic sexual playthings remain unchanged. For fear that telling their stories will fulfill society's implicit expectations about their sexuality, most black women have retreated into silence. Tricia Rose seeks to break this silence and jump-start a dialogue by presenting, for the first time, the sexual testimonies of black women. Spanning a broad range of ages, levels of education, and socioeconomic backgrounds, twenty women, in their own words, talk with startling honesty about sex, love, family, relationships, and intimacy. Their stories dispel prevailing myths and provide revealing insights into how black women navigate the complex terrain of sexuality. Nuanced, rich, and powerful, Longing to Tell will be required reading for anyone interested in issues of race and gender.
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Reviews
"Tricia Rose's Longing To Tell is a powerful and pioneering work. For the first time we hear the painful and poignant voices of black women in all their humanity and complexity. Do not miss this pathblazing book!"
Cornel West, Princeton University and author of Race Matters
"By breaking a public silence, Professor Rose and her storytellers here have done us all a great service. This is one of the first brave steps in beginning to fill in the obliterated stories of black women's many sexualities."
Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth
"In Longing to Tell, Tricia Rose shares something all too rare: a good conversation with trusted women friends. The emotional power and raw poetry of these candid accounts compels our attention while gently nudging us to contemplate the larger narrative of race, class, color, sexuality and gender within which each intimate story unfolds."
Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School