Out for Glamour in Africa critically reflects on how Black women utilized Drum magazine, a leading publication in Africa during the era of independence, for political empowerment and constructing notions of Black femininity. Wanjirũ G. Mbure terms the concept of femme urbAfricana, a model of Black femininity depicted as urban, political, fashionable, paradoxically Afrocentric, heteronormative, and transnational. Foregrounding stories of the women who embodied these traits and the social, political, and economic forces that shaped their presence in Drum, Mbure argues that these representations of Black women from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States produced a novel form of Black urban femininity. 

Utilizing a breadth of archival materials from cover girl photographs, advertisements, and columns, to readers’ comments, Mbure reveals the complex relationship between the Black urban woman and the era’s contested ideals within a transnational matrix.

Wanjirũ G. Mbure is Associate Professor of English and Film & Media Studies and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Culture & Faculty Development at William & Mary.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments    
Introduction    
Architects of Femme Urbafricana    
African ‘Sirens’    
Commodity Queens    
Globalizing Femme Urbafricana    
Freedom Beauties    
Conclusion    
Bibliography