Katie Geneva Cannon Research Collection

To illustrate the complexities of black women's experiences of self-identification and racial embodiment, Phillis Isabella Sheppard provides an account that engages both psychoanalytic theory and the role of religion and cultural objects in self-understanding.

Walker-Barnes examines the burdensome yoke that the "Strong Black Woman" ideology places upon African American women. She demonstrates how its three core features -- emotional strength, caregiving, and independence -- constrain African American women and predispose them to physical and emotional health problems, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety. She traces the influences that resulted in the evolution and maintenance of the Strong Black Woman, including the Christian church, R & B and hip-hop artists, and popular television and film. Drawing upon womanist pastoral theology and twelve-step philosophy, she calls upon pastoral caregivers to aid in the healing of African American women's identities and crafts a twelve-step program for Strong Black Women in recovery.

This book establishes how Buddhism in the Insight Meditation tradition supports "remarkable relational resilience" for women who are of African descent and same-sex loving, yet living in a society that often invalidates women, African-Americans, LGBTQ people, and non-Christians. Pamela Ayo Yetunde explores the psycho-sexual experiences of African-American Buddhist lesbians, and shows that their abilities to be in healthy relationships are made possible through their Buddhist practices and communities, even in the face of invisibilizing forces related to racial, gender, sexuality, and religious discrimination and oppression.