Customer Reviews

Black Women For Beginners

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

... on the history of Black Women in the world. The author basically brainstormed many facts to the reader. Nearly all were fascinating and interesting.

However, Sharp, fails to provide an adequate bibliography, footnotes or other sources for her facts and quotes. Also, she included too many sarcastic captions (via comic book fashion) which were very degrading to Black Women (and the crass language was not appreciated either). For these 2 reasons, I give this book only 3 out of 5 stars.

The author has wonderful information but did not treat the subject of Black Women in world history with the respect and sacredness it deserved. Nevertheless, the book is a good start. I recommend with hesitation. For immediate follow-up: a better, more scholarly book is Ivan Van Sertima's Black Women in Antiquity.

This book is written by Suandra Harp and it is written in a very entertaining style. The author makes you feel comfortable in the first few pages and makes you feel relaxed that this is going to be an easy book.

The book is divide into 6 or 7 sections dealing with many aspects of Black Women Influence. For example, one of the sections at the end of the book focuses on how black women fight in the army and how they have have fought in many wars. Another section talks about how black women were part of history and how Cleopatra was really black.

The book is written in very, very easy language and there are probably words on each page which makes it quick to read. There are also picutres and many quotes from books to support her point.

She tries to show in the book that Black Women were the orignal beauties and that white people originated from blacks.

Now comes my personal thought of the book

The book was good in the sense that it was very easy to read and it had many sources but the book portrays as black women being basically perfect and that a lot of their problems were caused by whites.

The book did not show to many opposing opinions. For example, in the book she talks about Cleopatra being black but she doesn't give facts to support. This might seem a contridiction to what I said earlier about her using sources but her sources in certain parts are from refutable sources.

But all in all the book is good in the sense that it does have some good information about the history of black women. It talks about how they fought for civil rights and how they fought for women's rights and many other accomplishments that black women are responsible for.

Buy this book for a fairly good history of black women.

I must say that this book is one of the most damaging and dangerous book to black woman I have yet to read. The beginning of this book focuses on the afrocentric view of creationism which yes is a theory, however she never fully develops the concept. The problem with her book is that she does not have a point to many of her chapters. She uses sarcasim and inunnedo profusely without elaboration. Ms. Sharp then proceeds to "call out" fellow African Americans in history for their "wrongs" done to other African Americans. She also makes a point of mentioning woman who "pass" into white society. What she dosen't say is how they are passing. Do they deny their heritage? Or are they just not "black enough" for Ms. Sharp. The end of the book is somewhat better. It chronicles acheivements of African American woman through out history. However, because of the first part of her book, I was tempted to look up every fact because she lost credibilty in my eyes. I believe that if Ms. Sharpe would slow down and stop trying to be satirical and start trying to teach, she might be able to do some serious writing. I would not reccomend this book unless all captions written by her were taken out.

Saundra Sharp has done a great job of blending fact, mythology, speculation and commentary into a riff on Black womanhood that plays like sassy jazz. I bought copies for myself, my friends, my nieces, my daughter AND my son! If you've ever wondered about the magic and mystique of Black women, this book is for you.

this was the perfect gift and a book that was long seeked for by my girlfriend, she was very excited when i surprised her with it a week after she told me about running across it at a friends home. Excellent book with invaluable infromation.

It is difficult to make any sense out of this rather vain, self-conscious and self-serving eschatological laundry list that attempts to elevate black women (only) culture to a new self-devised station in world history?

What the author has constructed here is a new fictitious category of a "redefined human being:" a new race as it were, without black men? A new kind of race-less, male-less, but yet cosmopolitan female: One desired by everyone because of her beauty, her very African features, her strength, and of course her nappy hair, big lips, hips -- their sinuous moves -- and her black skin? A newer model of Oprah's "precious."

This history is populated by female black sailors and by navigators of the seas, who traveled and transported themselves right through the era of exploration? It has black women heroes from the Caribbean to China and everywhere else in between? The best proof is that all of the historical artifacts were busts of black women -- from the black Madonnas, to Cleopatra and Nerfertiti and onwards; but is it unfair to ask: who produced those artifacts? Was it perhaps other black women sculptures making images of themselves? Or was there another species of (lesser) human beings involved somewhere also?

The generalized black woman as the ultimate queen of all queens (the mother of all queens) is the infamous "Lucy," the paradigmatic "first woman," the mother of all humanity, the grand matriarch who magically auto-reproduces and spreads herself out from Africa across the world, without fathers or even sperm donors? How does this happen? I thought only Gods could auto-procreate?

I know we have finally arrived at the point where everyone is a self-declared author and hero in his/her own self-described drama and narrative, but this version is plain ridiculous? Has the author not forgotten that even "tongue and cheek" fantasy must have some minimal attachment to a reality with which the average reader can also connect to, and with which she/he is familiar?

This book is black historical fiction with a capital "F," and the author has taken complete leave of her senses. She makes no attempt at reasonable connections to any historical reality with which a normal reader would be familiar? And even if she could have succeeded at doing so, it seems clear it would all have been for naught? For the thin motive of self-elevation through self-aggrandizement is instead of being self-esteem enhancing, is actually the opposite and thus in the end is a down right embarrassment to black womanhood. For if the only purpose for self-elevation is just to sell the idea that all black women are beautiful, powerful, talented, virtuous, and desired by all men of the world, then of course such a narrative cannot exist in its own self-made vacuum? Not only would Dr. Freud have a lot to say about the structure of such a narrative, but so too would the rest of humanity.

Plus, culture asks but one simple question of those who trade in cultural ideas: What have you done for the survival of black people today?

And the answer culture gets back to that question from fanciful free-flowing cultural footwork such as that presented here is a confusing post-modern version of Aunt Jemimaism in which today's black woman is constantly doing little more than hiding in the shadows, reading the tea leaves, waiting for the white man to makes his move, then wielding a Christian Bible like a Billy Club to pounce on some innocent black man (usually her husband and sons) to hammer them in the back of the head while the white man is pleasingly looking on? That is the much starker more cowardly reality that lurks behind this false consciousness of black female heroine-ism. So much for cultural enlightenment post-modern black woman style. One Star

This book was an amazing read, I loved it so much I bought it for my sister. It really discuss everything about women, from the beginning to present. It goes into detail about many different ethnic backgrounds such as african, hispanic,european,indian and how all these backgrounds have become mixed by a black women, it even goes in depth on how many black women use to alter there physical features to white women in the past. The book is also a bit humerous and a bit sad at the same time, it really makes you think how far women have come and what many women have been through, or are currently going threw, in many places around the world. Towards the end of the book it displays many black women who have made many contributions to society. This book was a real eye opener, I take my hat off to the author, she really did her research.

Then know a sistah. Black Women for beginners gets you started on the right track of black woman's history. Remember though it is only a beginning, there is much more to learn.