How does the concept of love fit with Black identity?

When Black Lives Matter activist Marissa Johnson was pressed to address why she “hates white people”, she responded with this question: do you love Black people? This book is an exploration of the issues raised by this radical question – a refusal to centre Black identity on whiteness, a question of how love, and self-love, fit with Black identity, and a queering of how Black identity is understood.

Told through autobiographical reflection, this book contains the story of one Black woman’s process of iterative identity formation, grappling with the intersections of sexuality, gender, self-image, and love. Focusing on lived experience, the book places theories in context, exploring what ideas look like when applied to real life, making it invaluable reading for Black Studies and related courses.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• v
• Dedication
• viiiixNotes on language
• xxiContents
• xiixiiiLearning objectives
• Introduction
  • Chapter 1: Welcome to America
  • Chapter 2: Learning to be Black and female: an American dilemma
  • Chapter 3: Black liberation, who? Black liberation, what?
  • Chapter 4: White supremacy is whack
  • Chapter 5: Ex-church girl
  • Chapter 6: Sex and the Black Christian girl
  • Chapter 7: The road to Queerville
  • Chapter 8: Love as a mission
• 1 Welcome to America
• 2 Learning to be Black and female in America
  • Black faces in white spaces
  • What your college choice says about your blackness
  • Vassar girl
  • Kentucky fried nope
  • The anxiety of impending adulthood
• 3 Black liberation, who? Black liberation, what?
  • Half-human with twice the stress
  • Immigrant try-hard
  • Lean back before you “Lean In”
• 4 White supremacy is whack
  • The whiteness of feminism
  • Young feminist AKA the big piece of chicken
  • Out of the house of bondage
  • White denial is dangerous
• 5 Ex-church girl
  • Getting saved
  • Christian fearmongering
  • Dazed and confused
  • Selling Jesus in the ‘hood
  • Sex and the Christian girl
• 6 Sex and the Black Christian girl
  • Puberty exposed
  • Sex, masturbation, and the good girl
  • Teen pregnancy: a fate worse than death
  • Sex as a disease
  • Attractive versus attraction
• 7 The road to Queerville
  • Birthday dildo
  • The L Word made me queer … maybe
  • I am not a lesbian, and neither is my wife
  • Queer versus lesbian versus bisexual
  • Queer as a … choice
  • Fleeing the “free-est” country in the world
• 8 Love as a mission
  • “Love’s Lover”
  • Taking love seriously
  • Love as a commitment
  • Loving blackness
  • Love and capitalism: an experiment
• 138139Notes
• 145Discussion questions
• 146147References
• 151Recommended further reading
• Index

Kadian Pow PhD is a Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University. A Jamaican-American ex-pat, she is now based in Birmingham, UK.

On Thursday September 7, 2023, we held a seminar in our Topics in Black Studies series:

Losing My Religion: How Organized Religion Continues to Control and Shape Black Women’s Identity

This free seminar was a conversation between author Kadian Pow and Chris McAuley, Lived Places Publishing Collection Editor. In this very personal discussion, they talked about how religious institutions have maintained their power to shape and control Black women's identities, despite a statistical decline in church attendance.

>> VIEW SESSION REPLAY