Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality 1848-2016

Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848–2016 explores how black women in France itself, the French Caribbean, Gorée, Dakar, Rufisque, and Saint-Louis experienced and reacted to French colonialism and how gendered readings of colonization, decolonization, and social movements cast new light on the history of French colonization and of black France. In addition to delineating the powerful contributions of black French women in the struggle for equality, contributors also look at the experiences of African American women in Paris and in so doing integrate into colonial and postcolonial conversations the strategies black women have engaged in negotiating gender and race relations à la française.

Drawing on research by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and countries, this collection offers a fresh, multidimensional perspective on race, class, and gender relations in France and its former colonies, exploring how black women have negotiated the boundaries of patriarchy and racism from their emancipation from slavery to the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Félix Germain is an assistant professor of Africana studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Decolonizing the Republic: African and Caribbean Migrants in Postwar France, 1946–1974. Silyane Larcher is a historical and political sociologist working as a research scholar at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is the author of The Other Citizen: The Republican Ideal and the West Indies after Slavery.