Double burden : Black women and everyday racism /

St. Jean and Feagin's book is about middle-class African American women in the contemporary US. It is based on individual and focus-group interviews (nonrandom/unspecified sample) with a "large number" of middle-class African Americans. Topics cover work, physical appearance, media representations, relations with white women, black families, and motherhood. The inclusion of many quotes from the interviews enrich the text and give it enduring value. The analysis of these texts is not profound but is appropriate for use at an undergraduate level. Inappropriate, however, is the authors' failure to cite relevant literature that weakens their arguments, e.g., publications by Carol Stack and Bettylou Valentine, among others, that portray black women and families in a positive way, or any mention of John Gwaltney's now classic exploration of "mainstream" blacks in Drylongso (CH, Nov'80). Also inappropriate are the misconceived comparisons between the US and the Caribbean, e.g., Haitian poetry on the beauty of black, brown, and yellow women and its absence in US literature. A more meaningful comparison would be of poetry from a black society (like Haiti) with that of black Americans, easily accomplished by momentarily refocusing attention to the blues. General readers; undergraduates. F. J. Hay; Appalachian State University

This book, based on interviews and focus groups with 200 black women, aims to examine "how African American women are physically, morally, and spiritually stigmatized by a dominant culture." The authors describe how the common stereotypes of the domineering "Sapphire" and the insatiable "Jezebel" endure. At work, they report, black women are seen as "more controllable by white decision makers." The authors criticize white standards of beauty, though their criticism of predominantly white children's dolls neglects to acknowledge a recent multicultural push. Other sections also seem slightly dated. Perhaps most usefully to readers new to this subject, respondents explain how seemingly small encounters‘like indifferent service‘create racial friction between blacks and whites. The authors make some worthy points, but their highly negative focus begs for more subtlety: for instance, why criticize Terry McMillan's book Waiting to Exhale without explaining why so many black women applauded it? St. Jean teaches sociology at the University of Nevada; Feagin teaches sociology at the University of Florida. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved