Freeing Black Girls

Tamura Lomax offers an insurgent feminist love letter to Black girls, women, mothers, and othermothers in which she outlines a radical dream that will allow them to survive America while being able to love themselves, others, and collective Black freedom.

In Freeing Black Girls, Tamura Lomax offers an insurgent feminist love letter to Black girls, women, mothers, and othermothers. Exploring what it means to mother Black children in the twenty-first century, Lomax shares her journey from her traditionalist Black girlhood to finding the path to revolutionary Black motherhood. Along the way, she shows how all Black people are endangered by white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchal dominance and emphasizes the power of looking and talking back. Lomax insists on Black feminist ways of living that value and nourish whole persons, sketching a radical dream that will allow Black women and girls to survive America while being able to love themselves, others, and collective Black freedom.

Ultimately, Lomax declares that Black women and girls are emphatically not defective, second-class, or immanent nurturers; they are sacred and revolutionary beings who deserve to live a life free of predation, patriarchy, misrecognition, misogynoir, and violence.

"Freeing Black Girls is an honest reckoning with one of our most sacred institutions--motherhood. Tamura Lomax's book raises critical questions about the emotional experiences and lives of Black girls, women, mothers, and othermothers in a society that is both antiblack and deeply invested in heteropatriarchy. Lomax provides readers with a fresh and nuanced perspective on how Black feminism can free us from the political and spiritual prisons of misogyny and racial animus."--Kaila Adia Story, author of "The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity"

Tamura Lomax is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University and author of Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture, also published by Duke University Press.

• Publisher: Duke University Press
  
• Publish Date: May 6, 2025
  
• Pages: 240
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Paperback
  
• EAN/UPC: 9781478028376
  
• Dimensions: 9.0 X 6.0 X 0.5 inches | 0.7 pounds
  
• BISAC Categories: Politics, Society & Current Affairs, Spirituality & Religion