African American Women Speak Out on Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas (African American Life Series) (Paperback)

~ Geneva Smitherman (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 1991 hearing in which black law professor Anita Hill told the Senate Judiciary Committee that black Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her was "a watershed, a metaphorical marker of the intersection of race, gender, class," notes Smitherman (Black Talk). In this worthy but uneven collection of essays, some 20 black women, mostly academics, hammer home that point. For example, Patricia Coleman-Burns traces how blacks' responses to the hearings depended on how they weighed those multiple factors. Elsa Barkley Brown, musing on Thomas's claim of a "high-tech lynching," observes that violence against African American women?including rape and lynching?lies outside our collective memory. Beverly Grier, interviewing Hill doubters, decries the "hegemonic" sexism within the African American community. Though the post-hearings election heralded "The Year of the Woman," Julianne Malveaux skeptically suggests that the main beneficiaries were upper-class women. In examining hearing transcripts, Smitherman observes that Hill's professional verbal style, in contrast to Thomas's exploitation of black rhetoric, lost her support among blacks; "African-American women must fashion a language...that speaks to the head and the heart of African America."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A set of papers from a scholarly press would not normally be commendable to nonacademic libraries, but here is a definite exception to that rule. As its title announces, this book affords examples of a perspective barely represented in other books on the Thomas-Hill controversy, that of progressive black women. Besides that distinction, the 20 contributions are not all the standard fare of academic anthologies. They do include scholarly work, such as an examination of the rhetoric of the Thomas confirmation hearings' several black female witnesses. But lively reviews of black women's reactions to the controversy and incitements to organize also appear. Best of all are several essays of personal reflection that range in tone from the high dudgeon of novelist and poet Margaret Walker Alexander to the wit of novelist Nettie Jones' lengthy review of the hearings as participatory public spectacle. Just don't expect any paeans to Justice Thomas' politics or opinions. Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814325300
• ISBN-13: 978-0814325308
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,835,395 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)