Searching for the New Black Man: Black Masculinity and Womens Bodies

HOW WOMENS BODIES FUNCTION WITHIN PRODUCTIONS OF IDEAL AND PROGRESSIVE BLACK MASCULINITIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Using the slave narratives of Henry Bibb and Frederick Douglass, as well as the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Walter Mosley, and Barack Obama, Ronda C. Henry Anthony examines how womens bodies are used in African American literature to fund the production of black masculine ideality and power. In tracing representations of ideal black masculinities and femininities, the author shows how black mens struggles for gendered agency are inextricably bound up with their complicated relation to white men and normative masculinity. The historical context in which this study couches these struggles highlights the extent to which shifting socioeconomic circumstances dictate the ideological, cultural, and emotional terms upon which black men conceptualize identity. Yet, Henry Anthony quickly moves to texts that challenge traditional constructions of black masculinity. In these texts she traces how the emergence of collaboratively gendered discourses, or a blending of black female/male feminist consciousnesses, are reshaping black masculinities, femininities, and intraracial relations for a new century.