Having It All: Black Women and Success.by Veronica Chambers Doubleday, January 2003 $23.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-385-50638-4 Ever since the mid-1800s--when the women's suffrage The term women's suffrage refers to an economic and political reform movement aimed at extending suffrage — the right to vote — to women. The movement's origins are usually traced to the United States in the 1820s. movement pitted white women's and black men's voting interests Voting interest in business and accounting is a percentage of voting stock owned. This notion is different from economic interest that refers to a percentage of all the equity issued, including preferred stock, warrants, and so on. against one another--black women have known they are the heirs of a dual inheritance: racism and sexism sex·ism n. 1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women. 2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender. . It's a taxing inheritance that has been the subject of much scrutiny and critique. In Having It All: Black Women and Success, writer Veronica Chambers adds class to the race-gender mix and revisits the well-traveled turf of black female experience to explore how professional women navigate their tony lifestyles, despite lingering lin·ger v. lin·gered, lin·ger·ing, lin·gers v.intr. 1. To be slow in leaving, especially out of reluctance; tarry. See Synonyms at stay1. 2. racism and sexism in society. The book begins engagingly enough. "For a long time" Chambers notes, "the media portrayed [successful Black women] as glorious exceptions to the welfare mother rule. But ... the news is this--in a single generation, Black women's lives have improved vastly on key fronts: professionally, academically and financially." She then cites a prominent 2000 study, which found that the number of black women who earned college degrees had increased by a whopping 73 percent over the previous decade--compared with a 47 percent increase for African-American men. Through interviews with upper middle-class, well-educated professionals, Chambers examines how black women have "changed our perception of ourselves [and] we're changing America's perception of us, too" Oddly, perceptions have changed so much that many of the women's stories are rather unremarkable. We meet attorney and jet-setter Crystal Ashby, who admits that she has "more money than my mother ever dreamed of earning." Computer software developer Donna Auguste says as long as you can "deliver the results," race and gender have little bearing on professional achievement. Journalist Angela Kyles notes that while interviewing for jobs abroad, she wasn't regarded as a "Black woman" And so on. Sure, finding black male companionship companionship the faculty possessed by most truly domesticated animals. They are social creatures and have a great need for the companionship of other animals. Animals in groups are quieter and more productive as a rule. can be a challenge. There's the guilt that comes with having too few African-American friends. And it's lonely being the only black face at the tennis club. But haven't many of us heard this before? If you read Leanita McClain's A Foot in Each World, Brent Staples' Parallel Time, dozens of post-Civil Rights memoirs, or anything Lawrence Otis Graham Lawrence Otis Graham is an African-American attorney, speaker, and a named best-selling author by The New York Times.[1] Biography Otis Graham was born on December 25, 1962 and graduated from Princeton University and Harvard University Law School. has ever committed to paper, you've essentially read Having It All. If you're not familiar with books about the lives of the black elite, and you're an isolated prep school grad/Ivy League coed who thinks you're the only black girl who speaks Russian and has an interest in studying Japanese architecture Japanese architecture, structures created on the islands that constitute Japan. Evidence of prehistoric architecture in Japan has survived in the form of models of terra-cotta houses buried in tombs and by remains of pit houses of the Jomon, the neolithic people of , and who still doesn't know that your foremothers have already paid the price of your ticket, well, then Having It All may just be the permission you need to soar. --E. Assata Wright is a freelance writer living in Jersey City, N.J. |
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