For over two centuries, in the North as well as the South, both within their own community and in the public arena, African Americans have presented their bodies in culturally distinctive ways. Shane White and Graham White consider the deeper significance of the ways in which African Americans have dressed, walked, danced, arranged their hair, and communicated in silent gestures. They ask what elaborate hair styles, bright colors, bandanas, long watch chains, and zoot suits, for example, have really meant, and discuss style itself as an expression of deep-seated cultural imperatives. Their wide-ranging exploration of black style from its African origins to the 1940s reveals a culture that differed from that of the dominant racial group in ways that were often subtle and elusive. A wealth of black-and-white illustrations show the range of African American experience in America, emanating from all parts of the country, from cities and farms, from slave plantations, and Chicago beauty contests. White and White argue that the politics of black style is, in fact, the politics of metaphor, always ambiguous because it is always indirect. To tease out these ambiguities, they examine extensive sources, including advertisements for runaway slaves, interviews recorded with surviving ex-slaves in the 1930s, autobiographies, travelers' accounts, photographs, paintings, prints, newspapers, and images drawn from popular culture, such as the stereotypes of Jim Crow and Zip Coon.

About the Author

Shane White is Professor is Honorary Research Associate in the Department of History, University of Sydney. He is the author of Stories of Freedom in Black New York. Graham White is Honorary Reearch Associate in the Department of History, University of Sydney. Shane White and Graham White are the coauthors of The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech.

Reviews

In this slim but fascinating volume of essays, scholars Shane White and Graham White try to divine the roots and meanings of African-American body adornment.

* Baltimore Sun Newspaper *

Innovative, thought-provoking, and consistently entertaining.... The authors' observations on the distinctive ways in which working class African Americans have dressed, styled their hair, and communicated meaning via gesture, dance, and other forms or bodily display reveal the existence of a vibrant, life-affirming black aesthetic sensibility that for generations has challenged white Americans' misplaced assumptions of superiority.... This well-illustrated, beautifully produced study does an admirable job of extracting an African-American perspective on cultural mediation from non-black and non-traditional sources.

* Georgia Historical Quarterly *

Sifting through photographs, paintings, interviews, and surveys, the authors detail how blacks from the slavery era to World War II developed a self-affirming, expressive body style that differentiated them from the larger society and was manifested in clothing, hairstyles, dance, gestures, and other personal attributes. They argue that the politics of 'black' style was the embodiment of ambiguity, acting as subtle jab to the dominant racial group.

* Library Journal *

A lively survey of Afro-American culture from its roots to the zoot suit.

* Midwest Book Review *

This volume provides fascinating glimpses (including more than 50 illustrations) of black culture, from owners' annoyance at their slaves' taste in color to beauty contests.

* Booklist *

As this brisk, illuminating survey amply documents, African American culture-from the 19th-century dandy mocked by whites to today's baggy hip-hop clothing-has helped make black survival possible in America, both as link to the homeland and as voice of resistance. Using material as varied as runaway slave advertisements, autobiographies, beauty-contest fliers and sociological surveys, the authors bring to vivid life 'the way in which, over more than two centuries, ordinary black men and women developed a style that did indeed affirm their lives.'... This well-researched and engaging history pulls together a mostly untold story with as much verve as the swinging dandies it depicts.

* Publishers Weekly (starred review) *

Focusing on such variegated indicators of black style as dress, hair, body language, and dance, the authors reveal an evolving semiotics of black self-creating that has been designed from its very outset to impose a degree of individuality on the numbing uniformity bred of slavery, poverty, Jim Crow laws, and white racism.... This volume represents an excellent example of how to use the most unlikely materials, such as newspaper-sponsored beauty pageants from the '20s, to examine how a people's culture defines its values in the face of oppression.... Well written and intelligently argued. It even has that rarity of rarities in a university press book: a preface that is delightfully funny. A highly useful contribution to black history from an unexpected direction, in every sense of that phrase.

* Kirkus Reviews *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the 1998 John Cawelti Book Award (Americ.



Book Information
ISBN 9780801482830
Author Shane White
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 155mm * 19mm