Contested Images

Women of Color in Popular Culture

Edited by Alma M. Garcia

Publication date:

20 September 2012

Length of book:

358 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

Dimensions:

237x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780759119611

Contested Images: Women of Color in Popular Culture is a collection of 17 essays that analyze representations in popular culture of African American, Asian American, Latina, and Native American women. The anthology is divided into four parts: film images, beauty images, music, and television. The articles share two intellectual traditions: the authors, predominantly women of color, use an intersectionality perspective in their analysis of popular culture and the representation of women of color, and they identify popular culture as a site of conflict and contestation. Instructors will find this collection to be a convenient textbook for women’s studies; media studies; race, class, and gender courses; ethnic studies; and more.

Acknowledgments
Credits
Introduction

Part I: Film Images
1 Ideological Racism and Cultural Resistance: Constructing Our Own Images, Yen Le Espiritu
2. Black Women’s Films: Genesis of a Tradition, Jacqueline Bobo
3. Ghosts and Vanishing Indian Women: Death of the Celluloid Maiden in the 1990s, M. Elise Marubbio
4. Lost in the Cinematic Landscape: Chicanas as Lloronas inContemporary Film, Domino Renee Pérez
5. Chasing Fae: The Watermelon Woman and Black Lesbian Possibility, Laura L. Sullivan

Part II: Beauty Images
6. Hey Girl, Am I More than My Hair?: African American Women and Their Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair, Tracey Owens Patton
7. Barbie’s Hair: Selling Out Puerto Rican Identity in the Global Market, Frances Negrón-Muntaner
8. The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture, Rayna Green
9. Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners, Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Part III: Music
10. Bad Sistas: Black Women Rappers and Sexual Politics in Rap Music, Tricia Rose
11. Jennifer as Selena: Rethinking Latinidad in Media and Popular Culture, Frances R. Aparicio
12. Passed into the Present: Women in Hawaiian Entertainment, Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman
13. Cibo Matto’s Stereotype A: Articulating Asian American Hip Pop, Jane C. H. Park

Part IV: Television
14. “Made to Be the Maid”?: An Examination of the Latina as Maid in Mainstream Film and Television, Rosa E. Soto
15. The Burden of History: Representations of American Indian Women in Popular Media, S. Elizabeth Bird
16. The Eurasian Female Hero(ine): Sydney Fox as Relic Hunter, Yasmin Jiwani
17. The Maddening Business of Show, Beretta E. Smith-Shomade

About the Editor

These articles by seasoned as well as new scholars cover in multiethnic, nuanced ways the role of popular culture for women of color in the United States. From television to film, music to media representations, the essays lay bare the placement and resistances of women of color in the face of industries that function by stereotype. An excellent teaching tool and collection by a respected sociologist who bridges easily the work of social scientists with humanists.