In this book, Lisa B. Thompson explores the representation of black middle-class female sexuality by African American women authors in narrative literature, drama, film, and popular culture, showing how these depictions reclaim black female agency and illustrate the difficulties black women confront in asserting sexual agency in the public sphere. Thompson broadens the discourse around black female sexuality by offering an alternate reading of the overly determined racial and sexual script that casts the middle class "black lady" as the bastion of African American propriety. Drawing on the work of black feminist theorists, she examines symptomatic autobiographies, novels, plays, and key episodes in contemporary American popular culture, including works by Anita Hill, Judith Alexa Jackson, P. J. Gibson, Julie Dash, Kasi Lemmons, Jill Nelson, Lorene Cary, and Andrea Lee.

Lisa B. Thompson is an associate professor in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the play Single Black Female.

Acknowledgments   ix

Introduction
Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class   1

Part 1: Performing Identity
1. Spectacle of the Respectable: Anita Hill and the Problem of Innocence   21
2. Staging Black Female Desire: The Drama of Race, Class, and Sexuality   43
3. Black Ladies and Black Magic Women:Independent Film and Black Sexuality   72

Part 2: Refashioning the Black Female Self
4. Narrating Sexuality in Contemporary African American Autobiography   97
5. Sex, Travel, and the Single African American Girl: Andrea Lee's Sarah Phillips   118
Epilogue   137

Notes   141
Index   175