Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire

by Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel

Overview

Black women living in the French empire played a key role in the decolonial movements of the mid-twentieth century. Thinkers and activists, these women lived lives of commitment and risk that landed them in war zones and concentration camps and saw them declared enemies of the state. Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel mines published writings and untapped archives to reveal the anticolonialist endeavors of seven women. Though often overlooked today, Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Eugénie Éboué-Tell, Jane Vialle, Andrée Blouin, Aoua Kéita, and Eslanda Robeson took part in a forceful transnational movement. Their activism and thought challenged France's imperial system by shaping forms of citizenship that encouraged multiple cultural and racial identities. Expanding the possibilities of belonging beyond national and even Francophone borders, these women imagined new pan-African and pan-Caribbean identities informed by black feminist intellectual frameworks and practices. The visions they articulated also shifted the idea of citizenship itself, replacing a single form of collective identity and political participation with an expansive plurality of forms of belonging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252084751
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Series:	New Black Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel is an assistant professor of French at University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue 1

Introduction 5

1 Suzanne Césaire: Liberation beyond the Great Camouflage 29

2 Paulette Nardal: Martinican Women as Political Protagonists in the Overseas Department 57

3 Eugénie Éboué-Tell and Jane Vialle: Refiguring Power in the French Union 82

4 Andrée Blouin: Métissage and African Liberation in My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria 119

5 Aoua Kéita: Rural Women and the Anticolonial Movement in Femme d'Afrique: La vie d'Aoua Kéita racontée par elle-même 143

6 Eslanda Robeson: Transnational Black Feminism in the Global South 169

Epilogue 187

Notes 197

Bibliography 219

Index 233

Editorial Reviews

"Beautifully written . . . Annette Joseph-Gabriel’s Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire offers a bold new path for reimagining the freedom struggles of the twentieth century. " —Black Perspectives

"Seven black women anchor Dr. Annette Joseph-Gabriel’s, Reimagining Liberation, an inspired and original history of decolonization. These women’s imaginings and practices of liberation politics and decolonial citizenship made them resilient political protagonists in a time of upheaval. In her important book, Joseph-Gabriel compellingly argues for doing far more of what she, Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Eugénie Éboué-Tell, Jane Vialle, Andrée Blouin, Aoua Kéita and Eslanda Robeson have done: centering black women’s experiences, politics and leadership within struggles to identify and challenge global systems of injustice."—Jennifer Boittin, author of Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris

From the Publisher