Promotional Information

Representing the sexuality of black middle class women in contemporary popular culture

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments   ix

Introduction
Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class   1

Part 1: Performing Identity
1. Spectacle of the Respectable: Anita Hill and the Problem of Innocence   21
2. Staging Black Female Desire: The Drama of Race, Class, and Sexuality   43
3. Black Ladies and Black Magic Women:Independent Film and Black Sexuality   72

Part 2: Refashioning the Black Female Self
4. Narrating Sexuality in Contemporary African American Autobiography   97
5. Sex, Travel, and the Single African American Girl: Andrea Lee's Sarah Phillips   118
Epilogue   137

Notes   141
Index   175

About the Author

Lisa B. Thompson is an associate professor in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the play Single Black Female.

Reviews

"In refreshingly clear prose, Lisa B. Thompson renders a complex and nuanced reading of black middle-class women from both fiction and real life. This study makes an important intervention in the discourse on what has heretofore been an under-theorized subject." E. Patrick Johnson, author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South