The Sisterhood

Caution! For multiple reasons the stock that we show on the website sometimes differs with the real stock we have in the shop.

The Sisterhood

34.75

One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan’s Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves “The Sisterhood,” the group―which also came to include Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Margo Jefferson, and others―would get together once a month over the next two years, creating a vital space for Black women to discuss literature and liberation. ‘The Sisterhood’ tells the story of how this remarkable community transformed American writing and cultural institutions. Drawing on original interviews with Sisterhood members as well as correspondence, meeting minutes, and readings of their works, Courtney Thorsson explores the group’s everyday collaboration and profound legacy. The Sisterhood advocated for Black women writers at trade publishers and magazines such as Random House, Ms., and Essence, and eventually in academic departments as well―often in the face of sexist, racist, and homophobic backlash. Thorsson traces the personal, professional, and political ties that brought the group together as well as the reasons for its dissolution. She considers the popular and critical success of Sisterhood members in the 1980s, the uneasy absorption of Black feminism into the academy, and how younger writers built on the foundations the group laid. Highlighting the organizing, networking, and community building that nurtured Black women’s writing, this book demonstrates that The Sisterhood offers an enduring model for Black feminist collaboration.

Availability: 1 in stock

SKU: 41580 Category: Tags: , ,
Subtitle: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture
Author: Thorsson, Courtney
Year: 2023
ISBN: 9780231204729
Pages: 296
Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publisher's city: New York
Publication date: 2023-11-22
Shopping Cart
Scroll to Top