Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy

Tricia Rose

Apr 2004 · Macmillan + ORM

About this ebook

The Sexual Lives of Black Women, In Their Own Words

In a culture driven by sexual and racial imagery, very few honest conversations about race, gender, and sexuality actually take place. In their absence, commonly held perceptions of black women as teenage mothers, welfare recipients, mammies, or exotic sexual playthings remain unchanged. For fear that telling their stories will fulfill society's implicit expectations about their sexuality, most black women have retreated into silence. Tricia Rose seeks to break this silence and jump-start a dialogue by presenting, for the first time, the sexual testimonies of black women. Spanning a broad range of ages, levels of education, and socioeconomic backgrounds, twenty women, in their own words, talk with startling honesty about sex, love, family, relationships, and intimacy. Their stories dispel prevailing myths and provide revealing insights into how black women navigate the complex terrain of sexuality. Nuanced, rich, and powerful, Longing to Tell will be required reading for anyone interested in issues of race and gender.

About the author

Tricia Rose is a professor of American studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is the author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. She lives in California.