African Diasporic Women's Narratives - by Simone a James Alexander (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

African Literature Association Book of the Year Award in Scholarship - Honorable Mention

Winner of the College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award

"Brilliant. Alexander helps us to understand the complexities of race, gender, sexuality, migration, and identity as they intersect with creativity. A must-read for those interested in women's writing today."--Renée Larrier, author of Autofiction and Advocacy in the Francophone Caribbean

"Critically engages current topical issues with sophisticated scholarly readings. There is a tone of the transgressive that gives this work the kind of edge that always provides transcendence."--Carole Boyce Davies, author of Caribbean Spaces

"An authoritative and original study, characterized by meticulously researched scholarship, which focuses on the female body across a fascinating corpus of literary production in the Caribbean and elsewhere. This refreshing and effective interdisciplinary approach extends the boundaries of traditional literary analysis."--E. Anthony Hurley, author of Through a Black Veil

Using feminist and womanist theory, Simone Alexander analyzes literary works that focus on the black female body as the physical and metaphorical site of migration. She shows that over time black women have used their bodily presence to complicate and challenge a migratory process often forced upon them by men or patriarchal society.

Through in-depth study of selective texts by Audre Lorde, Edwidge Danticat, Maryse Condé, and Grace Nichols, Alexander challenges the stereotypes ascribed to black female sexuality, subverting its assumed definition as diseased, passive, or docile. She also addresses issues of embodiment as she analyzes how women's bodies are read and seen; how bodies "perform" and are performed upon; how they challenge and disrupt normative standards.

A multifaceted contribution to studies of gender, race, sexuality, and disability issues, African Diasporic Women's Narratives engages a range of issues as it grapples with the complex interconnectedness of geography, citizenship, and nationalism.

Review Quotes

"A significant study of the black female body, and it contributes to the dialogue on the recognition of the female body in society, generating consciousness of its power."--Small Axe


"Initiates new conversations on the representation of black women's writings in a transnational context."--College Language Association Journal


"Refusing to fixate on suffering, Alexander celebrates African Diasporic women's transgressions of Western femininity, medicine, and citizenship."--Contemporary Women's Writing


"Through the works of four migrant women writers--Audre Lorde, Edwidge Danticat, Maryse Conde, and Grace Nichols--[Alexander] evaluates the sexual deviance embodied in diseased, disabled, and hypersexualized female bodies, as well as women's resistance against normative classifications. . . . An insightful (re)interpretation of black women's experiences both in the United States and beyond."--Women's Studies

About the Author

Simone A. James Alexander is professor of English at Seton Hall University and the author of Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women.