Deborah Whaley s Black Women - 1423 Words

Historically, Black women are depicted as the big black smiling mammy; the over sexed deviant with distorted body parts; and the angry sapphire. Within the male dominated comic art world, Deborah Whaley’s Black Women in Sequence: Re-inking Comics, Graphics Novels, and Anime offers a countervision on the Black body. Women, especially Black women may welcome the book as a confirmation that their story is recognized and represented. For this audience, Whaley will explore the historical, racial, and sexual representation of Black women in sequential art pointing out the imagined Black body through interracial relationships, African fetishism, cultural politics, financial gains and transnationality. Whaley deconstructs the generally accepted comic art world from 1930 to contemporary time by questioning writers’, illustrators’, and readers’ engagement of the mutual fabrication of the black female body and the (mis)representation of black women in sequential art. She challenges the production of â€Å"Blackness† and the absence Black female characters in mainstream comics, â€Å"comic book writers have used illustration of and ideologies about the Black female body to signify the fetish, fear, and fabrication of Africa† (p. 96). Further she debunks the white male inventions of â€Å"Blackness† and constructs an argument why sequential art is a feasible form of understanding visual narrative that reflect popular literature, identity politics, history, and cultural production from women of