My goal this month was to get into some new and old non fiction books by African American Women authors. Non fiction purports in good faith to protray the truth and accuracy regarding information, events or people. In my case I can rotate between fiction, non fiction and suspense/thriller novels with passion. Davis targets women and black studies in this book “Women, Culture & Politics.” To be honest it’s a very quick read, but in a few chapters I found myself getting lost in the amount of historic information that was being articulated. Once lost or finding a difficulty to get aligned with the content I close the book for the day and attempted to try again the next day.
Here we have a veteran writer, lecturer, scholar and fighter for human rights hitting the reader heavy with a powerful analyst of contemporary culture. She does so with so much openness, relentlessness and still on time for the matters of the present time even though this was written in the 1980’s. Angela’s writing displays how powerful her historical insights really are as revealed in her character and actions displayed during her lifetime of striving for liberation and justices for black women.
The struggles of the black woman in America displayed in this book still holds heavy on the hearts of woman of color and of all ages today. She pin points the struggles of equal opportunities in the workforce, working conditions, ageism, poverty, homophobia, and health. She analyzes different women’s movements that emerge from century to century in efforts to address this undeveloped country using statistics, facts and theories about the black woman. The call was for women empowerment through the term “Lift as we climb,” meaning as one woman goes up and conquers she has a duty to lift another woman up at the same time. Davis’s theory is for Afro-American women to join with all racial backgrounds of women and our black men across the globe as a means of empowerment and to dissipate oppression.
Davis attacked the health system un-designed for the black woman, the black family structure and women in capitalist societies. The black women’s health is defined as a commodity; only those with means are able to afford. Audre Lorde is noted to have said “diseases,hypertension, lupus, diabetes and cancer all are deemed as a cycle of oppression” which leads to drugs, which then started AIDs within the Afro-American women. Why is it that the country is designed this way ? It goes all the way back to a period in which the start and continuance of abortions and welfare was set as a means to keep the poor blacks poor, encourage single family homes, and create men dependent on a woman to provide welfare benefits.
From Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm and the author herself explores America’s long history of hating, attacking and severely disrespecting any Black woman who rises to a position of power. These attacks as often seen in the form of race and gender that was seen in the 1980s into the present. With the recent historic nomination of Kamala Harris into the role of VP 2020 and Biden’s running mate , the attacks she is experiencing may be in new form for her but it is something that black women have been experiencing for beyond this century.
I personally enjoyed this written piece by Davis but found myself dozing off toward the end. The Illustration of data, statistics and facts became overwhelming and in order to gather it all in, I had to slow down and re-read some chapters and head to research. Her input of her own intellectual, impactful and powerful speeches toward the end chapters were very much intriguing and persuading. I believe lives and ideas were changed for the better based on the thesis of her speeches and the overall synopsis of this book.

Thank you Ms. Davis
From, an Intrigued Mind
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