Embracing Sisterhood: Class, Identity, and Contemporary Black Women

by Katrina Bell McDonald

Overview

With this purported new 'era of high-profile, mega successful, black women who are changing the face of every major field worldwide' and growing socioeconomic diversity among black women as the backdrop, Embracing Sisterhood seeks to determine where contemporary black women's ideas of black womanhood and sisterhood merge with social class status to shape certain attachments and detachments among them. Similarities as well as variations in how black women of different social backgrounds perceive and live black womanhood are interpreted for a range of social contexts. This book confirms what many of today's African-American women and interested observers have known for some time: Conceptions and experience of black womanhood are quite diverse and appear to have grown more diverse over time. However, the potential for a pervasive and polarizing black 'step-sisterhood' is considerably undermined by the passion with which these women cling to the promises of cross-class gender/ethnic 'community' and of group determination. Embracing Sisterhood draws its analysis from in-depth interviews with eighty-eight contemporary black women aged 18 to 89 covering a variety of issues prompted by a survey questionnaire capturing various dimensions of gender/ethnic identity and consciousness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742545755
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/27/2006
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Katrina Bell McDonald is associate dean of multicultural affairs and associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Metaphorically Speaking
Chapter 2 The Legacy of Black Sisterhood: Deep Collective Roots
Chapter 3 The Contemporary Currency of Black Sisterhood
Chapter 4 "Struggle" as a Marker of Authentic Black Womanhood
Chapter 5 Discord in the Sisterhood: Classed Patterns of Sentiment and Experience
Chapter 6 Embracing Oprah Winfrey
Chapter 7 Conclusion: Re-Stimulating the Black Sisterhood

Editorial Reviews

Embracing Sisterhood utilizes an exhaustive investigation of secondary material in combination with interviews with a diverse group of African American women to explore the impact of a social class schism where images of class discord can mask shared concerns. McDonald’s powerful study is important reading for people interested in how social class can shape attachments and detachments within racial ethnic communities.

Elizabeth Higginbotham

Embracing Sisterhood is a thought-provoking examination of Black women's intersecting challenges, tensions, and issues of class in the 21st century. With eloquently simple yet subtlety provocative sophistication, McDonald captures the continuing trials and tribulations for these women in a changing post Civil Rights Era where race is not their only struggle, but part of the nexus of questions and answers associated with gender/ethnic identity consciousness and class....

Marlese Durr

This book is successful in that it is as 'real' and accessible as it is rigorous.

Women's Review of Books - Audrey Elisa Kerr