Killing the Black Body; Conquest; This Bridge Called My Back

[staubundsterne.livejournal.com]

Hi. This is the first part of my 2008' roundup (I'm so lazy when it comes to writeups, I hope to do better this year), links go back to my journal.

Dorothy Roberts (1997): Killing the Black Body. Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty. Random House/NY et al.

Dorothy Roberts looks at the history of Black women's bodies, the systemic abuse, starting at the beginning of colonial/modern slavery, over sterilisation abuses in the eugenics boom that had tens of thousands women of color coerced into sterilisation to newer and more streamlined methods of reproductive control like Norplant and Depo-Provera. While examining the effects of governmental policies and control images – Black Welfare Queens and Crack Babies - reproduced by society on Black women's reproductive rights, Roberts never shifts her focal point from her core question: How have these factors shaped Black women's reproductive freedom? (more)


Andrea Smith (2005): Conquest. Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. South End Press/Cambridge.

I read this one back-to-back with Killing the Black Body and, wow. Compellingly argued, Andrea Smith analyses how sexual violence is not as much a side-effect but a prequesition of colonialism, how the construction of white women's sexuality as clean and pristine needed a „rapable“ „counterpart“ in the flesh, how systemic abuse and „population control“ intersect and result in medical experimentation and objectification of native women's bodies. The scale and scope of the analysis shines, the critique of the response to gender based violence against women of color makes more than sense and Andrea Smith poses uncomfortable but logical questions: If our current governmental system and the institutions that should guarantee that nobody's voice is erased just don't work what good do they do?*(more)


Cherríe Moraga/Gloria Anzaldúa, Ed. (1981/1983): This Bridge Called My Back. Writings by Radical Women of Color. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press/New York.

There are a lot of reviews of Bridge in this community and I'm only adding my voice to the chorus. For me, this is writing in the best and most powerful sense, full of passion, emotion, intelligence and empathy. I don't know what to tell you about Bridge except that you should go read it. Now. (more)