Black Feminist Thought

Introduction

Patricia Hill Collins, a sociologist at the University of Cincinnati, published the book in 1990 and a revised edition in 2000. She reconstructs a tradition of Black women’s thought that includes academics as well as blues singers, novelists, activists and ordinary women, and identifies its main themes: work and family, “controlling images” such as the mammy or the welfare mother, motherhood, sexuality and activism. Her central concepts are the “outsider within” position of Black women in white institutions, the matrix of domination, in which race, class, gender and sexuality interlock, and an epistemology that values lived experience, dialogue and an ethic of caring. The book received the C. Wright Mills Award and is a key text of intersectional theory.

Connections

Builds on

• A Voice from the South1892 · Anna Julia Cooper
• The Science Question in Feminism1986 · Sandra Harding