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Lena Horne, Moms Mabley, Yolande DuBois, and Memphis Minnie were Black women who, despite their public profiles, discovered ways to enjoy pleasure in their public and private lives.
See Me Naked looks at these women as representative of Black women who were watched, criticized, and judged by their families, peers, and, in some cases, the government. Despite the pressures of respectability, they lived extraordinary lives.
List of contents
Introduction: Pleasure Is All Mine
1. Finding Yolande Du Bois's Pleasure
2. Lena Horne and Respectable Pleasure
3. Moms Mabley and the Art of Pleasure
4. Memphis Minnie and Songs of Pleasure
5. Pleasurable Resistance in Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter
Conclusion: Black Feminist Musings from Nature, The Context of Pleasure in 2020
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
About the author
TARA T. GREEN is a professor and former director of African American and African diaspora studies at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. She is the author or editor of several books, including
A Fatherless Child: Autobiographical Perspectives of African American Men, winner of the 2011 Outstanding Scholarship in Africana Studies Award from the National Council for Black Studies, and
Reimagining the Middle Passage: Black Resistance in Literature, Television, and Song.
Summary
During their extraordinary lives, Lena Horne, Moms Mabley, Yolande DuBois, and Memphis Minnie enjoyed pleasure as they gave pleasure to both those in their lives and to the public at large. This looks at these women as representative of other Black women of the time, who were watched, criticized, and judged yet still managed to enjoy themselves.
