| Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 Contributor(s): Gross, Kali N. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0822337991 ISBN-13: 9780822337997 Publisher: Duke University Press OUR PRICE: $26.55 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2006 Annotation: "In this high-spirited and original study, Kali N. Gross combines top-notch scholarship and a sense of the empowering potential of history as she mines previously untapped sources to understand black women's crimes in Philadelphia in the period 1880-1910. She tells the story of how race, gender, and sexuality shaped criminal justice, criminology, and urban reform movements while she also explores how black women negotiated with the justice systems they encountered. Gross addresses topics other scholars have avoided, including these women's experiences of abuse and their own acts of violence, to produce a story that is at once painful, moving, and inspiring."--Nicole Hahn Rafter, author of "Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons, 1800-1935" "Through an examination of black women engaged in both property and violent crime in the context of political, social, and economic disfranchisement, Kali N. Gross has produced a riveting narrative that reveals the ways in which criminal acts and courtroom and prison behavior were also expressive acts. She not only contributes profoundly to our understanding of black working-class and poor women in and around turn-of-the century Philadelphia but also resists the tendency to romanticize these women as 'primitive rebels.' The work is truly pathbreaking."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination" "Much has been made in media reports about the fact that African American women are the fastest growing population in today's jails and prisons. If you have ever wondered about the historical roots of this trend, "Colored Amazons "is an excellent place to start. Kali N. Gross approaches her subjects with sensitivitywithout being sentimental as she unravels the complexities of poor women as agents and as victims negotiating survival and bouts with the law. This is a must read for all who want to understand the criminal justice system, women inmates, and the evolving social structure that locks them out and locks them up."--Tera W. Hunter, author of "To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War" |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - History | United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic (dc, De, Md, Nj, Ny, Pa) - Social Science | Women's Studies |
| Dewey: 364.374 |
| LCCN: 2006001659 |
| Series: Politics, History, and Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.72" H x 6.08" W x 9.24" (0.86 lbs) 280 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Geographic Orientation - Pennsylvania - Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic - Locality - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Sex & Gender - Feminine - Chronological Period - 1851-1899 - Chronological Period - 1900-1919 |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Colored Amazons is a groundbreaking historical analysis of the crimes, prosecution, and incarceration of black women in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century. Kali N. Gross reconstructs black women's crimes and their representations in popular press accounts and within the discourses of urban and penal reform. Most importantly, she considers what these crimes signified about the experiences, ambitions, and frustrations of the marginalized women who committed them. Gross argues that the perpetrators and the state jointly constructed black female crime. For some women, crime functioned as a means to attain personal and social autonomy. For the state, black female crime and its representations effectively galvanized and justified a host of urban reform initiatives that reaffirmed white, middle-class authority. Gross draws on prison records, trial transcripts, news accounts, and rare mug shot photographs. Providing an overview of Philadelphia's black women criminals, she describes the women's work, housing, and leisure activities and their social position in relation to the city's native-born whites, European immigrants, and elite and middle-class African Americans. She relates how news accounts exaggerated black female crime, trading in sensationalistic portraits of threatening "colored Amazons," and she considers criminologists' interpretations of the women's criminal acts, interpretations largely based on notions of hereditary criminality. Ultimately, Gross contends that the history of black female criminals is in many ways a history of the rift between the political rhetoric of democracy and the legal and social realities of those marginalized by its shortcomings. |