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Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977–2011

She Bites Back

Kendra R. Parker

This book critically situates the figure of the black female vampire in several fields of study including literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race studies. Black female vampires continue to appear as important literary devices and revealing indicators of cultural attitudes and trends about African American women’s bodies. This book examines five novels written by four African American women writers to investigate what it means to represent African American womanhood through the lens of vampirism, interrogate how these representations connect to or stem from historical representations of African American women, and explore how representations of black female vampires in African American women’s literature simultaneously negate, reinforce, or dismantle stereotypes of African American women.
  • Details
  • Details
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  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
Lexington Books
Pages: 188 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-4985-5317-9 • Hardback • November 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-5319-3 • Paperback • August 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)
978-1-4985-5318-6 • eBook • November 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)
Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women, Literary Criticism / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Kendra R. Parkeris assistant professor of African American Literature in the Department of Literature at Georgia Southern University

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The First Bite

1. “I’m not the vampire he is; I give in return for my taking.” The Black Female Vampire Figure

in Octavia E. Butler’s Mind of My Mind

2. Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories: Black Female Vampire as a New American Monomyth

3. Intersectional Disempowerment and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A Vindication of the Rights of Anita Hill in Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling?

4. “She’s not turning. She’s in flux”: The Ability/Disability System in L.A. Banks’s The Bitten

5. Rehabilitative Logic: Sex Work, Procreation, and Vampires in Pearl Cleage’s Just Wanna Testify

Afterword: The Final Bite

Bibliography

She Bites Back explores the ambiguous and contradictory nature of the vampire historically and as it appears in African American women’s fic­tion, particularly as these texts use the vampire to interrogate notions of black women’s sexuality, agency, and value in varied communities. . . Parker offers significant insight into the ways contemporary African American women writers reinvent possibilities for black women through evaluating and rejecting tired tropes, positing and practicing an ethics of care, and claiming the right to agency, power, and self-definition, but doing so not as a monolith but through inventive, imaginative diver­sity—not as an “age” but as a necessary, significant, and potentially trans­formative moment.


— Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature


She Bites Back relocates the image of the black female vampire from the margins of our imaginations to the center of our consciousness. Kendra R. Parker reveals how and why the black woman has been employed to represent some of Western society’s greatest fears and most passionate desires. Exhilarating scholarship!
— Gregory Jerome Hampton, Howard University


Parker’s masterful work provides a profound, visionary analysis of the negative images and stereotypes black women have historically confronted and overcome in American society. Her insights illuminate the awesome creativity that’s helped reclaim and protect black female dignity and identity from poisonous cultural colonization.
— Fred L. Johnson III III, Hope College


Parker’s energetic, well-researched book chronicles the creative and subversive ways black women have written about vampires. Rooted in history, but firmly aimed at the present and future, Parker’s research and analysis reveal the deeper meaning behind black women’s depictions of vampires in myriad forms—and how sometimes the unhuman can be the most human rendering of all.
— Tananarive Due, University of California, Los Angeles


Parker wrests the vampire from the throes of the Gothic to reveal its complex relationship with black women’s bodies. She journeys from the history of the vampire as a conduit for the fears of a eurocentric society to the moment when black women writers assume ownership of the vampire as their own tool of expression.
— Tarshia L. Stanley, St. Catherine University


Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977–2011

She Bites Back

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • This book critically situates the figure of the black female vampire in several fields of study including literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race studies. Black female vampires continue to appear as important literary devices and revealing indicators of cultural attitudes and trends about African American women’s bodies. This book examines five novels written by four African American women writers to investigate what it means to represent African American womanhood through the lens of vampirism, interrogate how these representations connect to or stem from historical representations of African American women, and explore how representations of black female vampires in African American women’s literature simultaneously negate, reinforce, or dismantle stereotypes of African American women.
Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 188 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9
    978-1-4985-5317-9 • Hardback • November 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
    978-1-4985-5319-3 • Paperback • August 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)
    978-1-4985-5318-6 • eBook • November 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)
    Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women, Literary Criticism / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
Author
Author
  • Kendra R. Parkeris assistant professor of African American Literature in the Department of Literature at Georgia Southern University

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgments

    Introduction: The First Bite

    1. “I’m not the vampire he is; I give in return for my taking.” The Black Female Vampire Figure

    in Octavia E. Butler’s Mind of My Mind

    2. Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories: Black Female Vampire as a New American Monomyth

    3. Intersectional Disempowerment and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A Vindication of the Rights of Anita Hill in Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling?

    4. “She’s not turning. She’s in flux”: The Ability/Disability System in L.A. Banks’s The Bitten

    5. Rehabilitative Logic: Sex Work, Procreation, and Vampires in Pearl Cleage’s Just Wanna Testify

    Afterword: The Final Bite

    Bibliography
Reviews
Reviews
  • She Bites Back explores the ambiguous and contradictory nature of the vampire historically and as it appears in African American women’s fic­tion, particularly as these texts use the vampire to interrogate notions of black women’s sexuality, agency, and value in varied communities. . . Parker offers significant insight into the ways contemporary African American women writers reinvent possibilities for black women through evaluating and rejecting tired tropes, positing and practicing an ethics of care, and claiming the right to agency, power, and self-definition, but doing so not as a monolith but through inventive, imaginative diver­sity—not as an “age” but as a necessary, significant, and potentially trans­formative moment.


    — Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature


    She Bites Back relocates the image of the black female vampire from the margins of our imaginations to the center of our consciousness. Kendra R. Parker reveals how and why the black woman has been employed to represent some of Western society’s greatest fears and most passionate desires. Exhilarating scholarship!
    — Gregory Jerome Hampton, Howard University


    Parker’s masterful work provides a profound, visionary analysis of the negative images and stereotypes black women have historically confronted and overcome in American society. Her insights illuminate the awesome creativity that’s helped reclaim and protect black female dignity and identity from poisonous cultural colonization.
    — Fred L. Johnson III III, Hope College


    Parker’s energetic, well-researched book chronicles the creative and subversive ways black women have written about vampires. Rooted in history, but firmly aimed at the present and future, Parker’s research and analysis reveal the deeper meaning behind black women’s depictions of vampires in myriad forms—and how sometimes the unhuman can be the most human rendering of all.
    — Tananarive Due, University of California, Los Angeles


    Parker wrests the vampire from the throes of the Gothic to reveal its complex relationship with black women’s bodies. She journeys from the history of the vampire as a conduit for the fears of a eurocentric society to the moment when black women writers assume ownership of the vampire as their own tool of expression.
    — Tarshia L. Stanley, St. Catherine University


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