America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice

In this fiery debut, Lindsey, a women’s studies professor at Ohio State University, decries historical and contemporary injustices against Black women in America. Interweaving her own harrowing experiences with astute cultural and political analysis, Lindsey sheds light on how police mistreatment, medical racism, poverty, intracommunal violence, and other social ills place Black women in a condition of “unlivable living.” Harrowing examples of cruelty and indifference litter the book, as Lindsey details the normalization of sexual violence against enslaved women; the branding of Black feminists as “race traitors”; the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, and others; and disproportionately higher rates of maternal morbidity and death from breast cancer among Black women. Amid the catalog of injustices, Lindsey spotlights Black women who organized for change—including Harriet Tubman, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells, and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer—and spotlights the leadership role African American women have played in #BlackLivesMatter and other social justice movements. Carefully researched and sharply argued, this is a righteous indictment of racism and misogyny. (Apr.)