Black Women Teach Us to Resist

The third installment in this series includes books that help us understand systemic oppression and point to strategies for resistance

Photo by Nayani Teixeira on Unsplash

It’s Women’s History Month (no matter what this regressive administration wants you to believe). I’m continuing my series on series on Black women writers who can help us to rethink our faith, fight oppressive systems, love and heal ourselves, and imagine new worlds. The first two installments in the series focused upon womanist theology, introducing Black women who help us to deconstruct and decolonize our understandings of scripture and Christianity. This third post in the series focuses on Black women’s writings about oppression and justice. It includes twelve books by Black feminist scholar-activists that help us to understand the systems that we are up against, to recall Black women’s history of fighting oppression, and to envision strategies for survival.

Black Feminist Foundations

Let’s start with the foundations. When I’m asked for book recommendations about Black feminism, I usually suggest Patricia Hill Collins, the GOAT of Black feminist scholarship. It’s impossible to choose just one of her books, as several have been pivotal in my own development and my writing. Black Sexual Politics is a great starting point for its easy-to-read description of how popular culture reinforces racism through the propagation of controlling images of African Americans. I frequently return to Black Feminist Thought for Collins’s power analysis of racism, a concept that is sorely lacking from many people’s understanding (especially Christians). Her co-authored book with Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality, provides a great breakdown of a frequently misused concept. These latter two books, though, are heavily academic. I admit that it took multiple readings of Black Feminist Thought for me to really grasp her idea.

Fortunately, there are more accessible books written by Black feminist foremothers that can help us to understand its theory and practice. bell hooks set the example for writing that is both easily-readable and content-rich. It was through books like Feminist Theory that I learned to proudly claim my own feminist identity. Another great point of entry is Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, a collection of essays and speeches that addresses topics such as sexism, poetry, love, anger, and silence. Christians would do well to read “An Open Letter to Mary Daly.” And everyone needs to read “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (and stop just quoting it all out of context). From scholar-activist Angela Y. Davis, I recommend Women, Race, and Class, an example of how Black women were doing intersectional work long before the term was developed. Davis’s book addresses how racism and classism pervaded the women’s movement.

A more recent book in this category is Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage. Cooper blends personal narrative with critical commentary to address Black women’s anger. She tackles the ways that our justifiable anger is weaponized against us. And she demonstrates the useful of our rage in fueling our resistance to oppression. Through the book she narrates her own process of finding her feminist identity and voice.

Another great foundational text is A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross. At a time when there’s a concerted effort to erase the history and cultural contributions of Black women and other people of color from the American story, Berry and Gross’s tracing of US history through the life and lens of Black women is more important than ever. This one is an especially good audiobook. Listen in your car while your kids are with you.

Racism and Resistance

For over 10 years now, I’ve taught a graduate level course on racism and racial justice. It’s been important to me in that course to prioritize the writings of Black women, whose voices are often excluded in seminary-based courses on racism. The last time that I taught the course, I used Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism, Lisa Sharon Harper’s Fortune, and my second book, I Bring the Voices of My People. Butler’s book is a concise, easy-to-read history of the evangelical church and the racism that pervades it. From its pro-slavery stance to its pro-segregation stance, Butler illuminates the path that have led us to the precipice we now face with the fundamentalist takeover of US politics. In Fortune, Harper brings new depth to the phrase, “the personal is political,” tracing US racial history through her own family story. It’s a powerful depiction of how systems are not separate from families. Racism is as deeply embedded in the economic, social, and psychological stories of Black families as it is in the systems that govern this country.

I Bring the Voices of My People is my push-back against the Christian racial reconciliation movement, which often reduces racism to being about feelings and relationships. In it, I try to provide on-ramps to the complex scholarship on race and racism, unpacking topics such as the social construction of race, intersectionality, and how White supremacy has malformed White culture. I use Alice Walker’s The Color Purple as an exemplar of Black women’s approaches to racial reconciliation that centralizes repair and healing for the oppressed as well as repentance and transformation for the oppressor.

This fall, I am teaching the course again. I’m looking forward to adding Kelli Carter Jackson’s new release, We Refuse, a history of the range of strategies that Black people – often led by Black women – have used to resist White supremacy and fight for Black liberation, including nonviolent and violent resistance, flight, and joy. I wish that I could also add Prentis Hemphill’s What It Takes to Heal and EbonyJanice’s All the Black Girls Are Activists. I love the way that both of them center healing as a resistance strategy and a way to transform the world. I’ll be drawing on both of these in my forthcoming book. And I’m going to find a way to get them in my curriculum somehow.

I’ll address the topic of healing next week in the final installment in this series. In the meantime, add these books to your reading list. Ask your institutional and public libraries to stock them. Buy them if you can, especially from an independent bookseller. If there’s not one in your area, you can order from one through Bookshop.org.

What books by Black women have helped you to deepen your understanding of systemic oppression and strategies for resistance? Leave a comment and let us know.

Get Your Sacred Self-Care Study Guide

Speaking of healing, Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. This year, it feels like we need practices of giving up and taking on. So say no to Amazon, Target, Walmart, and all the companies that have decided to side with the oppressive practices of this administration. Take on practices of self-care and supporting small businesses.

This is the perfect time of year to read (or re-read) Sacred Self-Care with a group. The group study guide is available now.