Mutha' is half a word : intersections of folklore, vernacular, myth, and queerness in black female culture / L.H. Stallings.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horton-Stallings, LaMonda.

Series:

Black performance and cultural criticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

African American women in literature.

Lesbianism in literature.

Gender identity in literature.

African American women--Race identity.

African American women.

African American women--Intellectual life.

African American women--Folklore.

Folklore.

American literature--Women authors.

Physical Description:

xv, 334 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2007]

Summary:

Mutha' is Half a Word: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queernes in Black Female Culture explores the importance of sexual desire in the formation of radical Black females, subjectivities in Black women's culture through the trope of the indefinable trickster figure. L. H. Stallings offers distinct close readings of understudied African American women's texts through a critical engagement with folklore and queer theory. To date, most studies on the trickster figure have rarely reflected the boldness and daring of the figure itself. Emblematic of change and transgression, the trickster has inappropriately become the methodological tool for conservative cultural studies analysis. Mutha' Is Half a Word strives to break that convention.

This book provides a much-needed analysis of trickster tradition in regard to gender, sexuality, and Black female sexual desire. It is the only study to focus specifically on trickster figures and African American female culture. In addition, it contributes to conversations regarding the cultural representation of Black female desire in ways that are not strategically invested in heteronormative binaries of male/female and heterosexual/homosexual. The study is distinctly different because it explores folklore, vernacular, and trickster strategies of queerness alongside theories of queer studies to create new readings of desire in literary texts, hip-hop and neo-soul music, and comedic performances by Black females.

Contents:

The black woman and the trickster trope of unnaming

The erotics of a healing subjectivity: sexual desire, the spirit, and the divine nature of trickster

"Mutha' is half a word!": tar baby trope and blue material in black female comedy

Badd-nasty: tricking the tropes of the Bad man/Nigga and Queen B (?)

The black and white of Queen B(?)'s play

Queen B(?)s queering of neo-soul desire

Representin' for the bitches: Queen B(?) in hip-hop culture

Trickster's gift: a language of sexual rights through polymorphous erotics and voluptuous black women's sexualities.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-328) and index.

ISBN:

9780814210567

0814210562

9780814291351

081429135X

OCLC:

76416520