Abstract
In Critical Appropriations, Drake argues that the literary and cultural productions of black women are increasingly creating transnational identities for African American women, identities that reflect an “immobile transnationalism” based less on migration than a syncretic blending of the nationalities and cultures that have informed their lives. These productions complicate ideas of cultural homogeneity and racial essentialism that inform studies of black women, and that too often see their lives as revolving around motherhood, kinship, and community. In support of her thesis, Drake analyzes six productions that privilege difference in the lives of black women. She describes them as “critical appropriations” because they strategically situate the identities of black women in a transnational context, even though the majority of African American women probably have never left the United States.
The book is divided into three parts: part one uses Toni Morrison’s Paradise and Erna Brodber’s Louisiana to explore critical gender consciousness among black women. In Paradise, a diverse group of black women draw on cultural traditions and spiritual wisdom from a variety of sources to create strong bonds and a self-love ethic that foster cultural hybridity and transnational identities. Louisiana memorializes the life of Zora Neal Hurston through a fictional character (“Ella”) who struggles to find a physical and intellectual space for work in the white male-dominated field of anthropology. Ella’s work challenges master narratives in anthropology and social science methods that silence the experiences of black people. In doing so, she empowers women in the field and situates their identities in a transnational context.
Part two examines transnational feminism and sisterhood by exploring the collaboration between two cultural icons in the music industry, Beyonce Knowles and Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll. Drake argues that Beyonce has moved away from being identified as a black woman; she has become lighter, thinner, and blonder, and lost the corn-rowed hair. Her B’Day disc included songs in Spanish, an appropriation of a transnational identity. Beyonce teamed with Shakira in the music video Beautiful Liar, a production with transnational appeal. Shakira is from racially mixed heritage and has recorded music in different languages. In Beautiful Liar, the two portray women who discover they are dating the same man, and then decide he’s not worth fighting over—sisterhood triumphant. The video reflects female solidarity and empowerment, according to Beyonce, and restores a natural state of sisterhood that was stolen by patriarchy.
Third-wave feminism and black masculinity are the overarching themes in part three, which focuses on three productions: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia, Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, and Kasi Lemmon’s Eve’s Bayou. Caucasia and Corregidora highlight the perils of uncritical appropriations, in this case accepting the propaganda of Brazil as a racial utopia where blackness is accepted and even privileged. Drake argues that black people have always searched for “geographies of freedom”—places where racial equality and democracy prevail—yet such spaces rarely exist. Black people who appropriate Brasilidade as an identity find themselves in a nation that embraces miscegenation but as a “whitening” strategy; thus, they engage in practices that harm black families, silence black men, and create problematic father–daughter relationships. Incest, adultery, and murder are also the major themes in Eve’s Bayou, a movie that highlights the transnational identities of black women and deconstructing tropes of family, kinship, and community. This movie defies images of African American women as “strong, unbreakable, and unfeeling” and refuses to depict black men in a monolithic way.
This is a smart book. It challenges us to move beyond dominant narratives about African American women (and men) and situate their experiences in the context of the emerging field of transnationalism—a concept Drake argues still lacks a clear definition. Considering the identities of black women as transnational helps define and expand the meaning of transnationalism and, Drake argues, calls for a paradigm shift in the field. Her work offers a fresh and appealing way to think about what it means to have a transnational identity. The reader who is not familiar with the cultural and literary productions examined by Drake is at a disadvantage in assessing her argument. Still, the notion that scholars have pigeonholed black women by using a national paradigm and reiterating tropes that keeps them tied to local, homogeneous spaces rings true. It also bears noting that Drake offers a critical analysis of these new identities. For example, while ethnically ambiguous women have become the cultural ideal in the music industry, creating such identities is not an option for most black women. Embracing sisterhood without a critical gender consciousness can be problematic. But the heterogeneity of black women and their transnational identities deserves analysis, and this book gives us a starting place. It deserves serious attention. This book is ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses on race and gender.