Souths in Her - Black Women Writers Choreographers Poetics of Transmutation

Since the Middle Passage, the intellectual and physical freedom of Black women in the United States and the Caribbean has been constrained. Yet Black women writers, artists, choreographers, and performers have contested pervasive political, cultural, and discursive silencing by drawing on the traditions and creative visions of multiple Souths: the Southern United States and the Caribbean, as well as Africa.

In The Souths in Her--a phrase borrowed from Ntozake Shange--Nicole M. Morris Johnson shows how key Black women artists transformed the enclosing narrative frames imposed on them, developing new forms of creative expression informed by the lived experiences and submerged histories of women across the Africana southern world. She analyzes the intertwined relationship between movement and writing in the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Dianne McIntyre, Maryse Condé, and Shange, among others. Morris Johnson demonstrates that although the central role of motion reinforced perceptions of primitivity that relegated Black women and the South to a space outside modernity, it was in fact crucial to their formal innovations. For these writers and choreographers, unexpected encounters with unfamiliar traditions and creative visions of multiple Souths catalyzed formal experimentation and movements for liberation. Considering the violence routinely inflicted on Black women alongside their artistic innovations, this book reveals a transmuted South that is rich in techniques for weaving liberatory works. Illuminating Black women's singular contributions to Black modernity, The Souths in Her offers new frames for understanding their embodied and textual creative expression.

About the author

Nicole M. Morris Johnson is an assistant professor of English at the University at Buffalo.

Product details

• Authors: Nicole M. Morris Johnson
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 03.02.2026
• EAN: 9780231219686
• ISBN: 978-0-231-21968-6
• No. of pages: 272
• Series: Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future
• Subjects: Guides > Self-help, everyday life > Family; Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; USA, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Women, LITERARY CRITICISM / Caribbean & Latin American, PERFORMING ARTS / Dance / Modern, History of art / art & design styles, History of Art, Literature: history & criticism, United States of America, USA, Gender studies: women, Gender studies: women and girls, Contemporary Dance, Literature: history and criticism, Black & Asian Studies, Hispanic & Latino Studies, ART / American / African American & Black, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African American & Black, Relating to African American / Black American people, Relating to Latin / Hispanic US American people