Bodies That Work. Tami Miyatsu

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Miyatsu, Tami (Tamiko), author.

      Title: Bodies that work: African American women’s corporeal activism

      in Progressive America / Tami Miyatsu

      Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2020.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019031130 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6723-2 (hardback: alk. paper)

      ISBN 978-1-4331-6724-9 (ebook pdf )

      ISBN 978-1-4331-6725-6 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6726-3 (mobi)

      Subjects: LCSH: Walker, C. J., Madam, 1867–1919. | Hackley, E. Azalia (Emma

      Azalia), 1867–1922. | Fuller, Meta Warrick, 1877–1968. | Baker,

      Josephine, 1906–1975. | African American women—Race identity. | African

      American women—Social conditions. | Human body—Social aspects—United

      States—History. | Progressivism (United States politics) | United

      States—Race relations.

      Classification: LCC E185.625 .M59 | DDC 305.48/896073—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031130 DOI 10.3726/b15386

      Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

      Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche

      Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available

      on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

      © 2019 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

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      www.peterlang.com

      All rights reserved.

      Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,

      xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

      About the author

      Tami Miyatsu is a professor of American literature at Kansai Gaidai University, Japan. She earned a PhD in literature from the University of Tsukuba. She has received MEXT/ JSPS KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientifi c Research) for studies on women’s slave narratives and the black women’s club movement.

      About the book

      Bodies That Work describes the redefinition of the invisible, fragmented, and commodified African American female body. In Progressive America, black women began to use their bodies in new ways and ventured into professions in which they had typically not been represented. They were bodies that worked—that labored, functioned, and achieved in collective empowerment and that overcame racial, ethnic, and class divides and grappled with the ideas and values of political, financial, and intellectual leadership, thereby dispelling the ingrained stereotypes of womanhood associated with slavery. Based on archival materials and historical documents, Bodies That Work examines four women who reinterpreted and reorganized the historically divided black female body and positioned it within the body politic: Sarah Breedlove Walker, or Madam C.J. Walker (1867–1919), an entrepreneur; Emma Azalia Hackley (1867–1922), an opera singer; Meta Warrick Fuller (1877–1968), a sculptor; and Josephine Baker (1906–1975), an international performer. Each reshaped a different part of the female body: the hair (Walker), the womb (Fuller), the vocal cords (Hackley), and the torso (Baker), all of which had been denigrated during slavery and which continued to be devalued by white patriarchy in their time. Alleviating racial and gender prejudices through their work, these women provided alternative images of black womanhood. The book’s focus on individual body parts inspires new insights within race and gender studies by visualizing the processes by which women lost/gained autonomy, aspiration, and leadership and demonstrating how the black female body was made (in)visible in the body politic.

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