Fierce Angels (Electronic book text)

An important work on an essential subject, Fierce Angels" "explores and explodes the idea of the "strong black woman" as never before. Authoritative yetdeeply personal and daringly confessional, Sheri Parks's bold new study of the black female's role as communal savior and martyr will challenge and change anyone who readsit.
Fierce Angels" "exposes the overwhelming emotional costs--as well as the benefits--attached to this role. Parks, an esteemed scholarand popular media personality, provides exclusive interviews and astute analysis, as well as accounts of her own searing and inspiring experiences, to highlight the myths and the realities of black women'slives.
Beginning with the oldest ongoing archetype, the Dark Feminine, Parks reveals the layered significance of the fertility of darkness--the abyss out of which the worldwas spoken into existence, the primordial creator in ancient Greek, Sumerian, and West African cultures, and the essence of Mother Earth herself. As these myths matured, they played critical parts in the assignment ofmaternal roles to women of African descent, the Dark Feminine acquiring a particularly acrid scent once she crossed the Atlantic Ocean in shackles, bound for a life ofslavery.
Parks traces the development of the "strong black woman" throughout her life on Southern plantations and New York streets and incountless kitchens in between. From the Black Madonna celebrated by Italian Americans to the nurturing and selfless "Mammy" forced to nurse her master's child before her own, these abidingsymbols of fortitude and dependability only solidified the mold into which the powerful dark woman was cast and paved a path that her descendants would have no choice but tofollow.
Fierce Angels" "follows the inheritors of this legacy of power, compassion, and familial devotion into today's world, seeing her in Coretta Scott King, who relinquished her dreams for those of her husband, and in Angela Dawson, a mother in East Baltimore whose home was fire-bombed when she tried to save her community from drugdealers. Parks also shares important examples from entertainment, cogently reexamined and in some cases surprisingly reclaimed, from Hattie McDaniel in "Gone with the Wind "to the no-nonsenseLieutenant Anita Van Buren played by S. Epatha Merkerson on "Law & Order."
Bringing it all home, Parks recalls the personal costs she'spaid for her own identity and fascinatingly captures those moments when she is expected to be all and know all, whether for her students at work or for strangers in the produce aisle in the supermarket. Sheinvestigates the support systems holding these stereotypes in place--latched onto by those both within and outside the traditional black community--and challenges readers, mothers, and daughters alike toexamine how damaging and rewarding the assignment of this role can be and to take control of it within their lives.
Credible and cathartic, piercing and provocative, Fierce Angels is a book born of pain and introspection, a work sure to stir debate and become the primary source on this vital topic.

"From the Hardcover edi