About the Authors

 Dr. Ann Lightner-Fuller is pastor of the Mt. Calvary African Methodist Episcopal Church, Towson, Maryland, an acclaimed speaker and author of Desperate People: Sermons for Times Like These and Your Daughters Shall Preach and Developing Female Mentoring Programs in the African American Church.

Rev. Gabriel Ezewudo, C.S.Sp. is a Holy Ghost Father from Nigeria studying Communications at the University of Montreal, Canada. Rev. Ezewudo was at one time the Director of the Holy Ghost Juniorate and House of Formation in Nigeria.

Rita B. Dandrige teaches English at the Department of English and Foreign Languages, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia.

Dr. Wavie Gibson, Jr. received his Ph.D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with concentration on Rhetoric and Linguistics. He has studied French, Latin, Russian, and Spanish and presently teaches at Salisbury State University, Salisbury, Maryland.

Dr. Ali Mazrui is the Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities Binghamton University State University of New York at Binghamton, New York; Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large University of Jos, Jos Nigeria; Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large School of Islamic and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia; Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Walter Rodney, Professor , University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana. Dr. Mazrui, a well-known Africanist Scholar, has published many books.

Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu, Publisher of Black Academy Press, Inc., is also a poet, novelist, critical writer, and author of several books including The Philosophy of Pan-Africanism, Leopold Sedar Senghor et la defense et illustration de la civilization noire, Behind the Rising Sun (novel), The Tropical Dawn (poems), Black Leaders of the Centuries, ed.; Modern Black Literature, and others as well as many scholarly articles in journals in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. He has published works in French, English, Igbo, and German.

Dr. Rose Ure Mezu, Associate Professor, English, Morgan State University, author of the seminal critical work, Women in Chains: Abandonment in Love Relationships in the Fiction of Selected West African Writers, a book of poems Songs of the Hearth, and Leadership, Culture and Racism, ed.., as well as numerous articles. A renowned feminist scholar and exponent of womanism. Dr. Rose Mezu is also the founder and coordinator of the Annual International and Interdisciplinary Black Creativity Conference at Morgan State University now in its third year.

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal is a professor at State University of New York at Albany.

Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, senior Pastor of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, is a theologian, civil rights leader and cultural historian. He is the author of several books including The African American Church: Past, Present, and Future, The Soul of Black Worship, and Spirits that Dwell in Deep Woods.

Tracey Walters is a Doctoral candidate at Howard University. Her areas of interest include Afro-British and African-American Literatures.

Religion and Society (1999) was published by Black Academy Press, Inc. / P.O. Box 619 / Randallstown, MD 21133

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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America By Melissa V. Harris-Perry According to the author, this society has historically exerted considerable pressure on black females to fit into one of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the Matriarch or the Jezebel.  The selfless Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.      Professor Perry points out how the propagation of these harmful myths have served the mainstream culture well. For instance, the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for black females to feel a maternal instinct towards Caucasian babies. As for the source of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their own bodies during slavery given that they were being auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate indiscriminately.

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Sex at the Margins Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry By Laura María Agustín This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London

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The Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration By Isabel Wilkerson Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin was falsely accused of stealing a white man's turkeys and was almost beaten to death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem after learning of the grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster made his trek from Louisiana to California in 1953, embittered by "the absurdity that he was doing surgery for the United States Army and couldn't operate in his own home town." Anchored to these three stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively researched study of the "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates sociological and historical studies into the novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling, and Pershing settling in new lands, building anew, and often finding that they have not left racism behind. The drama, poignancy, and romance of a classic immigrant saga pervade this book, hold the reader in its grasp, and resonate long after the reading is done.

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posted 7 November 2007