Why I Love Black Women - Hardcover

An open love letter to black women from one of our most popular African American writers and critics. . Son and husband, soulmate and teacher, Michael Eric Dyson owes his success to the love and support of the black women in his life. Yet too often, he warns, African American women are the victims of negative stereotypes that dominate the larger culture and even many quarters of black America. It's time to stop viewing black women as scolding sapphires, welfare queens, professional prima donnas-and carping competitors with white women -and to start giving them the respect and the love they deserve. Why I Love Black Women is an act of cultural restoration that rescues black women from vicious rhetoric and irresponsible generalizations. It is a catalogue of virtues, an unapologetically cheerful view of black women that rescues their strengths and beauties from callous denial or cruel indifference. Deeply personal and socially provocative, Dyson singles out the defining virtues of African American women. More than a colored knock-off of "vanilla" virtues, these qualities evoke praise and conjure awe in the face of black women's struggles. In an era marred by bigoted and baleful beliefs about black women-from hip-hop to the pulpit, from the streets to scholarly focus-Dyson offers a welcome reprieve from cultural madness. Why I Love Black Women explodes taboos while it celebrates the perseverance and the pride, the sensuality and the sophistication, of African American women everywhere.

Michael Eric Dyson is an ordained Ba ptist minister and Professor of African American S tudies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is th e author of Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for T upac Shakur, I May Not Get There With You: The Tru e Martin Luther King, Jr., Making Malcolm: The Myt h and Meaning of Malcolm X, Between God and Gangst a Rap, and Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line. He lives with his family in Philadelphia, Pennsylv ania.