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Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

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Killing the Black Body

Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

By Dorothy Roberts

By Dorothy Roberts

By Dorothy Roberts

By Dorothy Roberts

By Dorothy Roberts
Read by Shayna Small

By Dorothy Roberts
Read by Shayna Small

Best Seller

Category: Nonfiction

Category: Nonfiction

Category: Audiobooks

Paperback $17.00

Dec 29, 1998 | ISBN 9780679758693

Ebook $7.99

Feb 19, 2014 | ISBN 9780804152594

Audiobook Download $22.50

Oct 13, 2020 | 879 Minutes

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    Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
    Paperback $17.00
    Dec 29, 1998 | ISBN 9780679758693

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    • Paperback $17.00

      Dec 29, 1998 | ISBN 9780679758693

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      Feb 19, 2014 | ISBN 9780804152594

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    About Killing the Black Body

    Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication.
     
    “Monumental. . . . An important contribution to the literature of civil rights, reproductive issues, racism and feminism.” —San Francisco Chronicle
     
    In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies. From slave masters’ economic stake in bonded women’s fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood—and the exclusion of Black women’s reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas.
     
    “Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States.” —Ms.

    About Killing the Black Body

    Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication.
     
    “Monumental. . . . An important contribution to the literature of civil rights, reproductive issues, racism and feminism.” —San Francisco Chronicle
     
    In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies. From slave masters’ economic stake in bonded women’s fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood—and the exclusion of Black women’s reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas.
     
    “Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States.” —Ms.

    About Killing the Black Body

    This is a no-holds-barred response to the liberal and conservative retreat from an assertive, activist, and socially transformative civil rights agenda of recent years–using a black feminist lens and the issue of  the impact of recent legislation, social policy, and welfare “reform” on black women’s–especially poor black women’s–control over their bodies’ autonomy and their freedom to bear and raise children with respect and dignity in a society whose white mainstream is determined to demonize, even criminalize their lives.   It gives its readers a cogent  legal and historical argument for a radically new , and socially transformative, definition of  ”liberty” and “equality” for the American polity from a black feminist perspective.

    Listen to a sample from Killing the Black Body

    Also by Dorothy Roberts

    Shattered Bonds
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    Shattered Bonds
    See all books by Dorothy Roberts

    Also by Dorothy Roberts

    Shattered Bonds
    See all books by Dorothy Roberts

    About Dorothy Roberts

    Dorothy Roberts graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School. The author of more than forty articles and essays that have appeared in, among other publications, the Harvard Law Review and The New York Times, she has authored and co-authored… More about Dorothy Roberts

    About Dorothy Roberts

    Dorothy Roberts graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School. The author of more than forty articles and essays that have appeared in, among other publications, the Harvard Law Review and The New York Times, she has authored and co-authored… More about Dorothy Roberts

    About Dorothy Roberts

    Dorothy Roberts graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School. The author of more than forty articles and essays that have appeared in, among other publications, the Harvard Law Review and The New York Times, she has authored and co-authored… More about Dorothy Roberts

    Product Details

    Category: Nonfiction

    Paperback | $17.00
    Published by Vintage
    Dec 29, 1998 | 400 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780679758693

    Category: Nonfiction

    Ebook | $7.99
    Published by Vintage
    Feb 19, 2014 | 384 Pages | ISBN 9780804152594

    Category: Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $22.50
    Published by Random House Audio
    Oct 13, 2020 | 879 Minutes | ISBN 9780593340189

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    Praise

    “Monumental. . . . An important contribution to the literature of civil rights, reproductive issues, racism and feminism.” —San Francisco Chronicle

    “Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States.” —Ms.

    “Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly valuable. . . . An important stepping-stone toward transforming the way black women and their children are treated in America.” —Kirkus Reviews

    “Chilling. . . . It becomes difficult to reject the author’s thesis. . . that there is a sustained, and in some quarters deliberate, campaign to punish Black women—especially the poor—for having children.” —The National Law Journal

    “An important and riveting book that skillfully and compellingly explains contemporary challenges to reproductive freedom.” —Patricia Hill Collins, author of Black Feminist Thought

    “A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and gender justice in America.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

    “A leading-edge critique of reproductive racism . . . In this current era, we discover the foresight and absolute necessity of Roberts’s approach.” —Angela Davis

    “Race in America cannot be fully understood without reading this compelling investigation. . . . Timely, insightful and unforgettable.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
     
    “A seminal work. . . .  Indispensable. . . . Prescient. . . . Even more urgent and more pertinent than it was twenty years ago.” —Harriet Washington, author of Medical Apartheid
     
    “A work of stunning erudition and finely calibrated moral concern. . . . Urgent, evocative and indispensable.” —William Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope

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