Secret Life of Bees: Black Madonna

Black Madonna by Courtney Hall Lee The figure of the Virgin Mary comes loaded with baggage and preconceptions. She is usually depicted as the perfect, obedient, and highly esteemed woman, much like the Victorian notion of the "angel in the house." For many black women, nothing could be more inaccessible. This book considers the relationship between African American women and Mary of Nazareth. After examining the history of black American motherhood during slavery and beyond, this book then gives an overview of the existing views of Mary in both the church and the academy. Lee then brings African American women and Mary together, creating a womanist Mariology by using womanist biblical and theological interpretation, as well as considering black motherhood during the age of "Black Lives Matter."

Fierce Angels by Sheri Parks An important work on an essential subject,Fierce Angelsexplores and explodes the idea of the “strong black woman” as never before. Authoritative yet deeply personal and daringly confessional, Sheri Parks’s bold new study of the black female’s role as communal savior and martyr will challenge and change anyone who reads it.     Fierce Angelsexposes the overwhelming emotional costs-as well as the benefits-attached to this role. Parks, an esteemed scholar and popular media personality, provides exclusive interviews and astute analysis, as well as accounts of her own searing and inspiring experiences, to highlight the myths and the realities of black women’s lives.     Beginning with the oldest ongoing archetype, the Dark Feminine, Parks reveals the layered significance of the fertility of darkness-the abyss out of which the world was spoken into existence, the primordial creator in ancient Greek, Sumerian, and West African cultures, and the essence of Mother Earth herself. As these myths matured, they played critical parts in the assignment of maternal roles to women of African descent, the Dark Feminine acquiring a particularly acrid scent once she crossed the Atlantic Ocean in shackles, bound for a life of slavery.      Parks traces the development of the “strong black woman” throughout her life on Southern plantations and New York streets and in countless kitchens in between. From the Black Madonna celebrated by Italian Americans to the nurturing and selfless “Mammy” forced to nurse her master’s child before her own, these abiding symbols of fortitude and dependability only solidified the mold into which the powerful dark woman was cast and paved a path that her descendants would have no choice but to follow.     Fierce Angelsfollows the inheritors of this legacy of power, compassion, and familial devotion into today’s world, seeing her in Coretta Scott King, who relinquished her dreams for those of her husband, and in Angela Dawson, a mother in East Baltimore whose home was fire-bombed when she tried to save her community from drug dealers.  Parks also shares important examples from entertainment, cogently reexamined and in some cases surprisingly reclaimed, from Hattie McDaniel inGone with the Windto the no-nonsense Lieutenant Anita Van Buren played by S. Epatha Merkerson onLaw & Order.     Bringing it all home, Parks recalls the personal costs she’s paid for her own identity and fascinatingly captures those moments when she is expected to be all and know all, whether for her students at work or for strangers in the produce aisle in the supermarket. She investigates the support systems holding these stereotypes in place-latched onto by those both within and outside the traditional black community-and challenges readers, mothers, and daughters alike to examine how damaging and rewarding the assignment of this role can be and to take control of it within their lives.     Credible and cathartic, piercing and provocative,Fierce Angelsis a book born of pain and introspection, a work sure to stir debate and become the primary source on this vital topic.

The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe by Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba From neolithic traditions to contemporary fairy tales: popular religiosity, folklore, and symbolic space in East-Central Europe -- The Virgin of Guadalupe and the creation of national Mestizo identity in Mexico -- Brazil and the Caribbean: Afro-Indo-European syncretism -- Aztlán: the subversion of the Virgin in the Mexican American Southwest.