MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States · 1994 · 48 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesLiteratureAmerican LiteratureColor TheoryGenre StudiesBluesModernismInvisibility
Black feminism occupies an ambiguous and contested space in contemporary cultural criticism. The book aims to pose historical and conceptual questions for emerging black feminist theory. Wallace draws on her mother Faith Ringgold’s work, her own Harlem upbringing, and the legacy of black artists to explore how black feminism carves out a distinct cultural practice. Wallace’s work represents a new departure in contemporary criticism, blending journalistic flair with scholarly rigor, and is poised to become a landmark in cultural studies and black feminist history.
In the shifting and conflicting currents of recent cultural criticism, no space is more ambiguous or difficult to define than that held by black feminism. In this new book, Michele Wallace poses the historical and conceptual questions which an emergent black feminist theory address. The author begins with a consideration of the work of her mother, the artist Faith Ringgold, and moves on to recollections of her own early life in Harlem, and an account of her development as a writer in the 1970s. She examines the collective legacy with which black artists - from Zora Neale Hurston and Ntozake Shange, to Spike Lee and Michael Jackson - must contend in carving out a distinctive cultural practice. Wallace's book marks a new departure in contemporary criticism, as she combines the flair of a popular journalist with the rigor of a committed scholar. Invisibility Blues is certain to become a landmark in cultural studies and a fundamental document in the history of black feminism.