Ladies' Pages: African American Women's Magazines and the Culture That Made Them
by Noliwe M. Rooks
Rutgers University Press, 2004 Paper: 978-0-8135-3425-1 | Cloth: 978-0-8135-3424-4 | eISBN: 978-0-8135-4252-2 Library of Congress Classification PN4882.5.R66 2004 Dewey Decimal Classification 051.082
ABOUT THIS BOOK | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, mainstream magazines established ideal images of white female culture, while comparable African American periodicals were cast among the shadows. Noliwe M. Rooks’s Ladies’ Pages sheds light on the most influential African American women’s magazines––Ringwood’sAfro-American Journal of Fashion, Half-Century Magazine for the Colored Homemaker, Tan Confessions, Essence, and O, the Oprah Magazine––and their little-known success in shaping the lives of black women.
Ladies’ Pages demonstrates how these rare and thought-provoking publications contributed to the development of African American culture and the ways in which they in turn reflect important historical changes in black communities. What African American women wore, bought, consumed, read, cooked, and did at home with their families were all fair game, and each of the magazines offered copious amounts of advice about what such choices could and did mean. At the same time, these periodicals helped African American women to find work and to develop a strong communications network. Rooks reveals in detail how these publications contributed to the concepts of black sexual identity, rape, migration, urbanization, fashion, domesticity, consumerism, and education. Her book is essential reading for everyone interested in the history and culture of African Americans.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
List of Illustrations
1. Scattered Pages: Magazines, Sex, and African American Migration
The African American Press in Historical Context
Shrouded in Sex: Writing Back to History
The Cult of Representation: "New Negro" Ladies
The New Woman: Consumerism and White Women's Magazines
The Migration Journals
2. Refashioning Rape: Ringwood's Afro-American Journal of Fashion
The Magazine
Julia Ringwood Costen: A Life in Context
Situating Silence: Race, Rape, and Memory
Black Bodies in the Key of White: The Accident of Color
Accounting for the Past
3. To Make a Lady Black and Bid Her Sing: Clothes, Class, and Color
Representing Fashion, Fashioning Representation
Showing and Proving That They Were Ladies
Advertising Ladyhood
White Fashion, Black Readers
Fashioning Race: The Twentieth Century
4. "Colored Faces Looking Out of Fashion Plates. Well!": Twentieth-Century Fashion, Migration, and Urbanization
Half-Century Magazine
The Migration of Fashion
The Burden of Dress
What They Are Wearing
The Status of Fashion
5. No Place Like Home: Domesticity, Domestic Work, and Consumption in "Modern" African American Culture
Home and Turn-of-the-Century American Culture in Black and White
Gender, Generation, and Domestic Work
From Character to Consumption
6. Urban Confessions and Tan Fantasies: The Commodification of Marriage and Sexual Desire in African American Magazine Fiction
Marriage, Urban Space, and Turn-of-the-Century Writing
Tan Confessions
Consuming Fantasies in Black and Tan
Ebony Dreams: Buying Citizenship, Selling Race
Marketing Matrimony, Selling Consumption
7. But Is It Black and Female?: Essence, O, and American Magazine Publishing
Essence Magazine
O, the Oprah Magazine
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: African American periodicals History 20th century, Women's periodicals, American History 20th century, African American periodicals History 19th century, Women's periodicals, American History 19th century
Ladies' Pages: African American Women's Magazines and the Culture That Made Them
by Noliwe M. Rooks
Rutgers University Press, 2004 Paper: 978-0-8135-3425-1 Cloth: 978-0-8135-3424-4 eISBN: 978-0-8135-4252-2
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, mainstream magazines established ideal images of white female culture, while comparable African American periodicals were cast among the shadows. Noliwe M. Rooks’s Ladies’ Pages sheds light on the most influential African American women’s magazines––Ringwood’sAfro-American Journal of Fashion, Half-Century Magazine for the Colored Homemaker, Tan Confessions, Essence, and O, the Oprah Magazine––and their little-known success in shaping the lives of black women.
Ladies’ Pages demonstrates how these rare and thought-provoking publications contributed to the development of African American culture and the ways in which they in turn reflect important historical changes in black communities. What African American women wore, bought, consumed, read, cooked, and did at home with their families were all fair game, and each of the magazines offered copious amounts of advice about what such choices could and did mean. At the same time, these periodicals helped African American women to find work and to develop a strong communications network. Rooks reveals in detail how these publications contributed to the concepts of black sexual identity, rape, migration, urbanization, fashion, domesticity, consumerism, and education. Her book is essential reading for everyone interested in the history and culture of African Americans.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
List of Illustrations
1. Scattered Pages: Magazines, Sex, and African American Migration
The African American Press in Historical Context
Shrouded in Sex: Writing Back to History
The Cult of Representation: "New Negro" Ladies
The New Woman: Consumerism and White Women's Magazines
The Migration Journals
2. Refashioning Rape: Ringwood's Afro-American Journal of Fashion
The Magazine
Julia Ringwood Costen: A Life in Context
Situating Silence: Race, Rape, and Memory
Black Bodies in the Key of White: The Accident of Color
Accounting for the Past
3. To Make a Lady Black and Bid Her Sing: Clothes, Class, and Color
Representing Fashion, Fashioning Representation
Showing and Proving That They Were Ladies
Advertising Ladyhood
White Fashion, Black Readers
Fashioning Race: The Twentieth Century
4. "Colored Faces Looking Out of Fashion Plates. Well!": Twentieth-Century Fashion, Migration, and Urbanization
Half-Century Magazine
The Migration of Fashion
The Burden of Dress
What They Are Wearing
The Status of Fashion
5. No Place Like Home: Domesticity, Domestic Work, and Consumption in "Modern" African American Culture
Home and Turn-of-the-Century American Culture in Black and White
Gender, Generation, and Domestic Work
From Character to Consumption
6. Urban Confessions and Tan Fantasies: The Commodification of Marriage and Sexual Desire in African American Magazine Fiction
Marriage, Urban Space, and Turn-of-the-Century Writing
Tan Confessions
Consuming Fantasies in Black and Tan
Ebony Dreams: Buying Citizenship, Selling Race
Marketing Matrimony, Selling Consumption
7. But Is It Black and Female?: Essence, O, and American Magazine Publishing
Essence Magazine
O, the Oprah Magazine
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: African American periodicals History 20th century, Women's periodicals, American History 20th century, African American periodicals History 19th century, Women's periodicals, American History 19th century