Traps : African American men on gender and sexuality

cover image

Where to find it

Stone Center Library

Call Number
E185.86 .T72 2001 c. 3
Status
Available

Undergrad Library

Call Number
E185.86 .T72 2001 c. 2
Status
Available

Summary

"This is a valuable project. The editors are excellent, well-known scholars, and activists in the academy." --Darlene Clark Hine

"After looking carefully at Traps' selections, I have to confess that I'm both excited and satisfied by what Rudolph Byrd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall have assembled here from the 19th century to the present. Educators genuinely need a text like this for opening their classroom to critical discussions on the well-worn subjects of race and gender."
--Charles Johnson

Traps is the first anthology of writings by 19th- and 20th-century African American men on the overlapping categories of race, gender, and sexuality. The selections on gender in Sections I and II reveal what some may view as the unexpected commitment of African American men to feminism. Included here are critiques of the subordinate social, economic, and political position of black women. Sections III and IV analyze the taboos and myths in which black sexuality is enmeshed. These essays also stress the importance of rejecting homophobia and the need to contest the predominance of a heterosexual paradigm. Monolithic constructions of gender and sexuality, reinforced by sexism and historically sanctioned homophobia, are the "traps" that give this book its focus and its title.

Contents

  • Preface
  • Prologue: Rudolph P. Byrd, "The Tradition of John: A Mode of Black Masculinity"
  • Part I Remembering Our Forefathers: Pioneering Perspectives on the Rights and Education of Womenv
  • "The Rights of Women" Frederick Douglass
  • "Give Women Fair Play" Frederick Douglass
  • "I Am a Radical Woman Suffrage Man" Frederick Douglass
  • "The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs" Alexander Crummell
  • "The Damnation of Women" William E.B. Du Bois
  • Part II Disloyalty to Patriarchy: Critiques and Misogyny and Sexism
  • "In the Days of My Youth" Benjamin Mays
  • "Feminism and Equality" Bayard Rustin
  • "Women's Rights Are Human Rights" Kalamu ya Salaam
  • "Groundings With My Sisters: Patriarchy and the Exploitation of Black Women" Manning Marable
  • "Breaking Silences" Calvin Hernton
  • "On Becoming Anti-Rapist" Haki R. Madhubuti
  • "The Sexual Diversion: The Black Man/Black Woman Debate in Context" Derrick Bell
  • "A Black Man's Place in Black Feminist Criticism" Michael Awkward
  • "'When and Where We Enter'-Reclaiming the Legacy of Black (Male) Feminism: W.E.B. Du Bois and My Search for a Womanist Forefather" Gary L. Lemons
  • "Men: We Just Don't Get It" Nathan McCall
  • Morehouse College, Mission Statement of Black Men for the Eradication of Sexism
  • Part III Meditations from the Heart: Making Meaning Out of Masculinity
  • "Here Be Dragons" James Baldwin
  • "In the Limelight" Arthur J. Robinson, Jr.
  • "The Sexist in Me" Kevin Powell
  • "A Phenomenology of the Black Body" Charles Johnson
  • "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man" Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
  • "Mike's Brilliant Careet" Gerald Early
  • "It's Raintin Men" Robert Reid-Pharr
  • "Dear Minister Farrahkan," A Letter from Men Stopping Violence
  • "Black Men in the Movies: How Does It Feel to be a Problem (and an Answer)?" Edward Guerreo
  • Part IV Brother to Brother: The Politics of Desire, Sexuality, and Homophobia
  • "A letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements" Huey P. Newton
  • "Brother to Brother: Words from the Heart" Joseph Beam
  • "Reflections of a SNAP Queen" Marlon Riggs
  • "Does Your Mama Know About Me?" Essex Hemphill
  • "Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject" Cornel West
  • "When you Divide Body and Soul, Problems Multiply" Michael Eric Dyson
  • "'Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing': Black Masculinity, Gay Sexuality, and the Jargon of Authenticity" Kendall Thomas
  • "Reflections on Black Manhood"
  • Epilogue: Beverly Guy-Sheftall
  • Bibliography

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