Black Feminist Thought Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

In "Black Feminist Thought," Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She not only provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde, but she shows the importance of self-defined knowledge for group empowerment. In the tenth anniversary edition of this award-winning work, Patricia Hill Collins expands the basic arguments of the first edition by adding several important new themes. A new discussion of heterosexism as a system of power, an expanded treatment of images of Black womanhood, U.S. Black feminism's connections to Black Diasporic feminisms, and more attention to the importance of social class and nationalism all appear in the new edition. In addition, the new edition includes recent developments in black cultural studies, especially black popular culture, as well as recent events and trends such as the Anita Hillhearings and the backlash against affirmative action.

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.

1. The Politics of Black Feminist Thought 2. Defining Black Feminist Thought 3. Work, Family, and Black Women's Oppression 4. Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images 5. The Power of Self-Definition 6. Black Women and Motherhood 7. Rethinking Black Women's Activism 8. The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood 9. Sexual Politics and Black Women's Relationships 11. Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

Patricia Hill Collins is Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She had published many articles in professional journals and edited volumes. Since the publication of Black Feminist Thought in 1990, she has published Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, (co-edited with Margaret Andersen), She is also the author of Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (1998).