Black Feminist Perspective Research Articles

Transgressive teaching and the Kingdom of God: Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Teaching to Transgress

This year marks the 30th anniversary of bell hooks’ critical pedagogy classic, Teaching to Transgress. In her book, hooks offers a Black feminist perspective on education as the practice of freedom, putting forward an “engaged pedagogy” that seeks to foster healing and liberation for both teachers and students. This essay aims to honor hooks’ influential text by identifying how it has shaped our efforts to develop kingdom pedagogies. Through a collaborative Christian dialogue, we illuminate how Teaching to Transgress can empower Christian educators to resist domination, cultivate embodied vulnerability, and pursue teaching and learning as a healing enterprise.

Discourses of Anti-Racism in Afro-Uruguay: A Black Feminist Perspective

Abstract: While a number of studies have examined (anti) racism in Uruguay in general (e.g., Andrews; Bucheli and Porzecanski; Olaza, "Políticas"; Rodríguez), discourse analytic studies of anti-racism in the Uruguayan context have not received the same degree of attention. In order to contribute to this gap, the current study examines resistance discourses of Afro-Uruguayan women. Through a Black Feminist lens, discourses regarding intersectionality, gender and racial inequality within the Uruguayan community, and solidarity among Afro-Uruguayan women are examined. A thematic analysis of Uruguayan media (news and social media) is employed to explore such discourses (e.g., Uruguay's Radio Camacuá, YouTube ), and the data are analyzed for discursive strategies following a Critical Discourse Studies approach. Findings reveal themes including the lack of access to employment and education for Afro-Uruguayan women, candombe as central to the identity of Afro-Uruguayan women and site of resistance, intersectionality, and community building within and beyond Uruguay. The discourse structures observed include expressing solidarity and collectivity through pronominal choice (De Fina, Identity ; Martín-Rojo), self-presentation, the use of statistics, and the use of non-sexist language, among others. This investigation aids in furthering our understanding of the ways in which anti-racist ideologies and praxes are reflected through discourses of women regarding racism in Uruguay.

The important role of distortion recognition in student advocacy leadership development.

Though promoting student advocacy has become an essential part of leadership education, few studies explore development of advocacy in leadership education. This article offers how distortions, an aspect of a Black feminist reframing of dissonance, is related to existing leadership education literature. It then introduces students' voices demonstrating the importance of the realization of distortions in student advocacy development and links distortions with how power communicates and upholds systemic oppression. Finally, we offer practical recommendations based on a case scenario that utilize Black feminist perspectives of dissonance in refining student advocacy leadership education. Such insight prompts more effective strategies in student advocate development.

No Lives Matter: Resisting Nihilism, Recuperating the Human

ABSTRACT Taking the slogan “no lives matter” as a starting point to diagnose the nihilism of our contemporary political culture, in this essay I tie the rise of nihilism to the resurgence of far-right political movements, chiefly the neo-reactionary thought of Nick Land. Following my discussion of Land and the culture of apocalyptic nihilism, I elucidate a Black feminist and decolonial perspective that, I argue, resists this creeping nihilism, and instead offers avenues of engaged political praxis for recuperating the politics of personhood. Using Sylvia Wynter’s work as an exemplar of such a perspective, I perform a rhetorical criticism of Land’s essay “The Dark Enlightenment” through the lens of Wynter’s understanding of the human. Critiquing his arguments, I argue that Wynter’s work offers a radical alternative to Land’s apocalypticism and antihumanism, one that maintains a commitment to reimagining the human rather than disavowing it.

Disrupting Discipline of Black Women in Higher Education from a Black Feminist Perspective of Foucauldian Discipline

Abstract The goal of our article is to explore how Michel Foucault and Patricia Hill Collins scholarly contributions work together to understand Black women’s experiences in the academy more deeply. Our qualitative and theoretical project was focused on 1) how the processes of surveillance, regulation, and discipline affect Black women, 2) how these processes reinforce white norms, and 3) how these processes exclude Black women from the university’s discourse of normality. While we contend that processes of surveillance, regulation, and discipline are found throughout the university structure, we focused on Black women’s relationships with these processes through their interactions with faculty. Inspired by the stories Black women students shared, we discuss and offer tension spaces as starting points for discussion and critical reflection that aim to disrupt the subordination of Black women in higher education.

Beyond the Canon: Seeking Black Women Artists in K-12 Art Education Teaching Resources

Despite the plethora of textbooks and teaching resources to guide the instructor in transmitting knowledge and skills for classroom instruction and curriculum development, many K-12 art education resources feature White, Eurocentric artists. Black women K-12 art educators are challenged to locate resources that enhance students’ understanding and interest in racial and gender identities. This research critically explores the representation and availability of Black women artists in K-12 art education textbooks and teaching resources. The images and artists in art education textbooks are crucial and can affect students’ understanding of art and teachers' development of an inclusive curriculum. I, therefore, investigated, through a Black feminist perspective, the underrepresentation of Black women artists in art education teaching resources. Drawing on narrative inquiry, I interviewed Black women elementary and secondary art educators throughout the United States to reveal the availability of Black women artists for classroom instruction and curriculum development. As a result, the data collected highlights emergent themes and subthemes that describe patterns of Whiteness in art education. This research demonstrates the need to diversify K-12 art education textbooks and teaching resources beyond a few token Black women artists.

Set Ablaze Yet Not Consumed: Tenure Seeking Blackwomxn and Black Feminist Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching and Mentoring during COVID-19

This study was designed to explore the personhood affirming approaches Blackwomxn faculty incorporate in teaching and mentoring Students of Color and the impact of COVID-19 on their efforts. Using a Black feminist perspective, we centered the pedagogical practices of Blackwomxn faculty to examine their unique experiences and interactions with Students of Color. Their narratives reflect how Blackwomxn faculty contribute worldviews that challenge Eurocentric, patriarchal and heteronormative pedagogical practices and how their approaches to teaching and mentoring demonstrate what we label as contemporary anti-slavery rebel behavior.

Multiple barriers to the Dutch welfare state. Black Feminists’ intersectional claims to social citizenship in the 1980s

Already in the 1980s, Black feminists contributed to political debates on the Dutch welfare state. Their intersectional analyses of social citizenship were directly based on the lived experiences of Black women in the Netherlands. However, then and now, these contributions have been largely overlooked in both Dutch politics and welfare state research, leading to social policies that do not correspond with the lived experiences of all women. Through archive research, and using the analytical framework of political claims-making, this article sheds light on the social rights claims of the Surinamese-Dutch feminist organization Ashanti that was active between 1980 and 1987. Their Black feminist perspectives provide important insights into the underlying mechanisms of in- and exclusion of the Dutch welfare state, from the standpoints of Dutch citizens and families that did not necessarily fit the picture of the “imagined citizens” for whom the Dutch welfare state was built.

Cracking a brick in the master's house: counter practices as counter-accounts of difference and survival

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how an alternative accounting system developed by a marginalised group of women enables them to counter oppressive systems built at the intersections of gender, class and race.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on diary notes taken over a period of 13 years in France and Senegal in the context of the first author's family interactions with a community of ten Black immigrant women. The paper relies on Black feminist perspectives, namely, Lorde's work on difference and survival to illuminate how this community of women uses the creative power of its “self-defined differences” to build its own accounting system – a tontine – and work towards its emancipation.FindingsThe authors find that to fight oppressive marginalising structures, the women develop a tontine, an autonomous, self-managed, women-made banking system providing them with cash and working on the basis of trust. This alternative accounting scheme endeavours to fulfil their “situated needs”: to build a home of their own in Senegal. The authors conceptualise the tontine as a “situated accounting” scheme built on the women's own terms, on the basis of sisterhood and opacity. This accounting system enables the women to work towards their “situated emancipation”, alleviating the burden of their marginalisation.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper gives visibility to vulnerable women's agentic capacities through accounting. As no single story captures the nuances and complexities of accounting, further exploration is encouraged.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the counter-accounting literature that engages with vulnerable, “othered” populations, shedding light on the counter-practices of accounting within a community of ten Black precarious women. In so doing, this study problematises these counter-practices as intersectional and built on “survival skills”. The paper further outlines the emancipatory potential of alternative systems of accounting. It ends with some reflections on doing research through activist curiosity and the need to rethink academic research and knowledge in opposition to dominant epistemic standards of knowledge creation.

Applying Black Feminist Theory to Research, Practice, and Advocacy on Gendered Racism among Black Women

Although there has been an increase in intersectionality scholarship in the field of psychology, there is still a dearth of research and praxis grounded in a Black feminist theoretical perspective. The purpose of this paper is to apply a Black feminist and intersectionality lens to research, practice, and advocacy on Black women’s experiences of gendered racism. First, this paper will provide a brief herstory of Black feminist, womanist, and intersectionality theory and its relevance to the field of psychology. Next, we will highlight an example of how to apply a Black feminist and intersectionality lens to research on gendered racism among Black women. Then, we will apply Black feminism to therapy with Black women by highlighting a clinical case example. We will end by highlighting the importance of Black feminism to social justice advocacy and systems-level interventions to promote the health and well-being of Black women.

“If a Black Woman Had Done It”: The Beliefs and Attitudes of Black Women K–12 Art Educators’ Curricular Experiences

Abstract Although the curriculum drives an educational program and is essential to students’ learning, minimal research documents the impact of whiteness in the curriculum development process for Black women K–12 art educators. This narrative inquiry aimed to explore how Black women who teach art in elementary and secondary school feel about their curriculum. For many educators, the school district provides their curriculum without input or knowledge of the students’ cultural backgrounds. The promotion of whiteness deters a diverse and inclusive learning environment. Through a Black feminist perspective, I critically expose, analyze, and identify Black women K–12 art educator's curricular experiences. In their narratives, I reveal the reality of how race influences who writes the curriculum and who is the target audience of learners. I interviewed 21 Black women who expressed their lived experience as K–12 art educators. Based on the findings of this study, the participants identify their challenges to create a diversified curriculum that mirrors the students in their classroom. The study encourages administrators, curriculum developers, and the field of art education to address the influence of race and gender on Black women's experiences.

Recognizing Greatness in Our Own Time

Recognizing Greatness in Our Own Time

(001) Black Women's Experiences of Sexual Anxiety

Abstract Introduction Sexual anxiety is one of the root causes of female sexual dysfunction (Pyke, 2020). Increased anxiety during sexual intercourse can cause women to avoid sexual activity altogether (Gerrier et al., 2015; Sanoff, 2016), experience reduced sexual satisfaction (Brassard et al., 2015), and lead to sexual difficulties such as anorgasmia, lack of arousal, and lack of sexual desire (McCabe, 2005). However, little is known about sexual anxiety beyond the narrow White male-focused quantitative research on sexual performance anxiety. Research fails to account for intersecting sociocultural oppression Black women face that may precipitate anxiety within a sexual context. For Black women, who experience sexual stereotypes about their sexual prowess (Collins, 2000), pressures to conform Eurocentric body standards (Awad et al., 2015), and reproductive health disparities that often precipitate sexual pain (Eltoukhi et al., 2014), examining sexual anxiety requires an intersectional lens, from onset to treatment (Hargons et al., 2022). Objective To counter the deficit-based narratives of Black women’s sexualities this study takes an intersectional approach and is rooted in Black feminist perspectives to center the voices of Black women in sex science and advance the research on Black women’s sexuality through a holistic lens. The purpose of this study is to understand Black women’s experiences of sexual anxiety using a phenomenological approach. This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by being the first study to our knowledge to 1) explore Black women’s experiences of sexual anxiety, including their self-reported precipitants and coping strategies, and 2) develop a working definition of sexual anxiety for Black women that capture the nuances of this phenomenon among them. Methods Data comes from Phase 2 of a larger explanatory mixed methods study on Black women’s sexual pain and sexual pleasure. To be eligible for Phase 1, participants had to be 1) premenopausal, 2) under the age of 50, 4) identify as a cisgender Black woman, and 5) live in the Southern region of the US. N=24 Participants completed a 60-min Zoom interview in April 2021. Interview data was analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results Participants reported three components of sexual anxiety as a phenomenon: 1) causes of sexual anxiety, 2) characteristics of sexual anxiety, and 3) coping strategies (see Figure 1). Causes of sexual anxiety contained five elements: partner unfamiliarity, oppressive body standards, rape culture and fears of sexual violence, pressure to meet societal sexual expectations, and anticipation of sexual pain. Characteristics of sexual anxiety included elements such as somatic, emotional, and cognitive symptoms and resultant behaviors. Coping strategies ranged from individual-level strategies to partnered coping strategies. Additionally, we composed a working description of sexual anxiety based on participant responses which account for sociocultural factors distinct for Black women. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of investigating, preventing, and treating barriers that exacerbate sexual difficulties, such as sexual anxiety, so Black women can engage in pleasurable sex and feel safe, mentally present, and confident during sexual experiences. Implications for intersectionality-informed interventions and suggestions for mental health professionals and partners will be discussed. Disclosure No

Black women’s quest for identity: A critical Study of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun

Tracing the history of black feminism, it becomes evident that the social construction of racism, sexism and classism was the driving force behind the widespread violence and discrimination against black women. They are found searching and struggling to attain their identity in this patriarchal world. Black feminist thought leads to certain ideas that clarify a standpoint of and for black women. Black feminist perspectives focus on the social domination on the basis of gender, race and class oppression. These oppressions are densely interwoven into social structures and work collectively to define the history of the lives of Black women in America and other coloured women worldwide. It takes us back to the era of United States slavery during which period, a societal hierarchy was established, according to which White men were supposed to be at the top, White women next, followed by Black men and finally, at the bottom were placed Black women. Black feminists were critical of the view that suggests that black women must identify as either black or women. The present paper looks at Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun from a black feminist viewpoint. It discusses position of a woman in male dominated society and her struggle for identity. It unfolds the saga of suffering and silencing of a black woman, which pervades the black women writings. It is depicted that black women have to face the unique challenging task of fighting for black liberation and gender equality simultaneously. The play effectively unthreads the history of African American women’s lives and their quest for identity in African American society. Issues of masculinity and femininity are deeply woven in this play. Women in this play present a microcosm of society; they are treated as second class citizens in society. Hansberry has depicted through her play the superiority that men pose over women. The glimpse of patriarchal dominance is visible throughout the play through different male characters. It further focuses on the value of the individual women’s identity and women’s right and freedom to construct their own separate identities rather than having them imposed against their wishes. It delineates how African American Women try to speak out against oppression and create a sense of individual identity in the face of silence and absence.

Black Women’s Mothering Practices in the Canadian Racial State: Reflections on Maternal Sufferation in the Afterlife of Slavery

This article foregrounds a Black feminist analysis of a bereaved Caribbean-Canadian mother, Cecile Case Holder, whose 24-year-old son, Andre Burnett, was murdered in Toronto on 10 September 2005. The article reframes her grief through the lens of maternal sufferation to explore a distinctly Jamaican reality in a transnational context. Burnett was one of 52 people who died by gun violence in what became known as “The Year of the Gun.” In an extensive interview with Holder about the life and death of her youngest child, Toronto Star reporter Jim Rankin addresses the forms of structural violence that contributed to the conditions that led to Burnett’s demise. Reading her narrative from a Black feminist perspective, the author explores the politics of Holder’s mothering practices to keep her children safe. Her narrative is located in the scholarship on Black motherhood in the African diaspora, focused on the exigencies of the afterlife of slavery. Cecile Holder’s reality is particular to her circumstances. Yet, her experience as a Black Jamaican mother in the Canadian racial state provides a snapshot of the quotidian navigations that frame women’s parenting practices at the nexus of structural violence and the demands of the global economy unique to African-Caribbean women.

Unmasking My Truth: Autoethnography of Psychological Stress as a Black Woman in the Academy

In this article, I use autoethnography as a method to explore my identity and its associated stressful impact on me as a Black woman in the academy. I used the conceptual framework of critical race theory, Black feminist perspective, and strong Black woman (SBW) schema to reflect on my experiences as an instructor and administrator. The conceptual framework will provide context to the psychological stress that I have faced from structural factors such as teaching evaluations, mentorship, collaboration with colleagues, and work responsibilities. This selfreflection of how I learned to speak my truth by acknowledging the barriers of psychological stress endured will bring awareness to other Black women faculty who face similar struggles.

A Black Feminist Perspective in Response to Roe v. Wade

The author writes a “letter” to White feminists and academic allies in order to demand greater modes of solidarity, and to draw attention to the ongoing and too-often ignored work of Black feminists in protecting and creating space for collective and social freedoms. The commentary recalls the legacy of Black feminist thinkers and activists, and positions their insights in a new era of legalized reproductive rights restrictions in the United States.

Dirge: Black and Indigenous Hemispheric Burial, A Sound Sculpture

Dirge:Black and Indigenous Hemispheric Burial, A Sound Sculpture Tao Leigh Goffe (bio), Aparajita Bhandari (bio), Lydia Macklin Camel (bio), Delilah Griswold (bio), Leanna Humphrey (bio), Nusaibah Khan (bio), André Nascimento (bio), Chijioke Onah (bio), Rewa Phansalkar (bio), Marsha Taichman (bio), Chloe Tsui (bio), and Hanxue Wei (bio) There must be no idle mourning. —Shirley Graham Du Bois1 Collective mourning and mass burial are uneven territories of racial grief and grievances.2 The way societies honor the dead is often as much a celebration of life as an arena for singing communal sorrow songs. The landscape architecture of burial is always fraught and racialized because the afterlife is segregated not only by different death rites and rituals but by the epistemic violence that extends past death. The minor and melancholy key of Black life and mourning is connected to that of Indigenous life and mourning across the Western Hemisphere because of colonialism. The two are not mutually exclusive scales of relation because of the crimes of stolen life and stolen land, as well as the important fact that Afro-Indigenous peoples share the history of both ongoing events.3 The theft of the body and of the land is a terrain inflected by the asymmetric valuation and formation of race as it takes shape differently globally. Connecting the disparate geographies and grounds of burial in Upstate New York, the Caribbean, and New York City and a speculative environment in the far future, I produced the sound sculpture Dirge with twelve graduate and advanced students. A hemispheric hymn for the dead, this collective dirge takes multiple forms; the central component is a twenty-seven-minute experimental film. In five acts, we feature sonic and visual interpretations of the spatial poetics [End Page 463] of Black and Indigenous mourning across the hemisphere as a celebration of the livingness of both communities. Another component of the project is a podcast; and the third part is this essay, which forms a written guide articulating the collaborative process behind coproducing Dirge. Together we explored how unmarked graves of improper burial for people of color in the Americas are structured by the violent and accelerating dynamic of racial capitalism that unevenly distributes the risk of premature death, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore tells us.4 The culmination of a Cornell University architecture seminar entitled "Black and Indigenous Metropolitan Ecologies" sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, this sound sculpture was produced as a creative offering in a time of crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.5 What sort of monument, we asked, could be built to celebrate life amid the harrowing stakes of mass death faced by Black and Indigenous peoples across space and time in the Western Hemisphere? As a collective of scholars and practitioners, how could we listen for the deafening din of state-sanctioned suffering with the riotous joy of Afro-Indigenous coalitions across space and time? Taking together the entanglement of the dispossession of Native sovereignty (stolen land) and African enslavement (stolen life) as foundational to a potential hemispheric politics of mourning, we decided sound would be a fitting medium for a funereal poetic sculpture. Sound sculptures take many forms, but most are intermedia time-based artforms that produce a soundtrack. The sonic register takes primacy and is often nondiegetic and nonlinear in its mode of composition. Under the frame of "metropolitan ecologies," I invited students to disrupt linear timescales and the binary between the urban-rural experiences. From a Black feminist perspective, I encouraged these students (several of whom are architects) to attend to the dark blueprints of race and space across the Americas. "Dark blueprints" is a phrase that Ben Platt, a member of the Dark Laboratory, my collective on race, ecology, and creative technology, used a couple years ago. I have not been able to forget it. Through literature, historical texts, theory, and film with special attention to the architecture of cities that might not be considered cities anymore, my students and I explored cemeteries as segmented cities of the dead. Hemispherically, from Brooklyn to Teotihuacán, we centered Indigenous architectures and infrastructures rooted in knowledge practices that Europeans depended on when they arrived with the aim of conquest. Black archaeologists such...

The Tender Gaze: Compassionate Encounters on the German Screen, Page, and Stage ed. by Muriel Cormican and Jennifer Marston William

Reviewed by: The Tender Gaze: Compassionate Encounters on the German Screen, Page, and Stage ed. by Muriel Cormican and Jennifer Marston William Maria Stehle The Tender Gaze: Compassionate Encounters on the German Screen, Page, and Stage. Edited by Muriel Cormican and Jennifer Marston William. Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2021. Pp. 232. Cloth $99.00. E-book $24.99. ISBN 9781640140745. The Tender Gaze is an ambitious scholarly and political project. By developing the tender gaze as a theoretical and analytical approach, the coeditors set the stage for a collection of essays that explore applications of the concept in German film and literature. The tender gaze, "an empathetic encounter with others" (3), is a tool to uncover the ways in which narrative, power, and politics are intertwined, within films, performances, and texts and in the process of reception. It further, as Muriel Cormican states, "acknowledges representation as always already implicated in power structures [End Page 392] while simultaneously using representation to question those power structures" (39). This definition connects the tender gaze with theorizing representation as always also political, as a process, and as intricately connected to power, and points to one of the crucial interventions the authors make with this book: in broad terms, they engage affect studies to rethink the political in literature. Cormican's introduction of the tender gaze focuses on examples in contemporary film, including a very perceptive discussion of Maren Ade's Toni Erdman (2016). She defines the concept in opposition to Laura Mulvey's "male gaze" and Ann Kaplan's "imperial gaze," and in conjunction with bell hook's Black feminist perspective, theorized as the "oppositional gaze" (17-20). The tender gaze, Cormican shows, draws attention to the structures of inequality that scholars have pointed out in media reception and attends to a new kind of political sensitivity toward these structures. Increasingly, people have become aware of bias and stereotypes in media representation. The tender gaze "resists objectification," "decenters the gaze," and opens up space for compassionate and tender ways of looking, understanding, and acting (see 20). Cormican argues that the tender gaze is set in motion by narrative and aesthetic form and that it operates regardless of whether consumers are aware of it or not. It, however subtle and relationally, shifts norms and opens up new political perspectives. Turning from cinema to live performance, Jennifer M. William offers close readings of contemporary theater productions that elicit the tender gaze. William evokes Brecht's political theater but against the assertion that in order for theater to "work" politically it needs to disengage emotionally, William shows that politics are deeply intertwined with affect. Disentangling the two might not only be impossible but it is theoretically flawed. In addition to Brecht's idea that political theater should aim to spur people into action, William presents case studies of contemporary German stage productions to explore "the potential of theater . . . to foster empathy and compassion . . . even in nonconventional, nonidentificatory performances" (45). These first two chapters, written by the coeditors of the volume, set the tone for the following essays; they also set the bar high. Both convincingly show how the tender gaze not only offers new analytical insights, but they also express the hope that it might "motivate us as a society to continue co-creating performance and embodying politics together, so that the urgency of addressing our shared social dilemma is kept foremost in mind" (44). These aims summarize the explicitly political and deeply theoretical project that the book sets out to undertake. The following ten essays offer examples of reading the tender gaze in film, theater, and literature. The topics range from contemporary anti-racist documentary films (see Nancy Nenno's essay on Mo Asumang) and discussions of films from the last few decades (Nikhil Sathe, Erika Nelson Mukherjee, Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien, John Blair, and Gary Schmidt) to analyses of nineteenth-century literature and poetry (Lorna Martens, Anna-Rebecca Nowicki, and Joseph D. Rockelmann). The book concludes with an essay on a contemporary literary example (Christina Weiler's essay on Birgit [End Page 393] Vanderbeke). Among these chapters, the essays on films offer the most convincing application of the analytical framework; the tender gaze, however, also...

Black Feminism Reflected through The Narrator’s Responses of Women Oppression In Maya Angelou’s Memoir: A Letter To My Daughter

Any unjust situation where one group denies another group is considered as oppression. This condition is possibly initiated by groups that assume their internal attribute as superior to another group. Therefore, the groups assume they have the right to deny another group's rights. Women oppression is one of kinds of oppression. The differences in physical and biological features of a woman's body benefit men with more privilege and no responsibility to carry children. As a result, a woman is considered as not necessarily need education and career path. A movement has arisen to defense oppressed women, especially women of color, whose experiences are not represented through the mainstream feminist movement. Black feminism's distinctive perspective sees oppression as an intersection of factors. This article aims to elaborate Black feminist perspective toward women oppression in Maya Angelou’s memoir entitled A Letter To My Daughter. The oppression experienced by Black women is identified in the form of the control of Black women images and the regulation of Black women bodies. The narrator’s critical perspective toward the oppression is articulated through her action in promoting self-definition and self-valuation to Black women. Self-empowerment enables Black women to resist and oppose any forms of oppression.