America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice

Summary

Reckons with violence against Black women in America and their resilient fight for liberation

America, Goddam explores the combined force of antiBlackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Through personal accounts and hard-hitting analysis, Black feminist historian Treva B. Lindsey starkly assesses the forms and legacies of violence against Black women and girls, as well as their demands for justice for themselves and their communities.

Combining history, theory, and memoir, this book renders visible the gender dynamics of antiBlack violence. Black women and girls occupy a unique status of vulnerability to harm and death, while the circumstances and traumas of this violence go underreported and understudied. Lindsey also shows that the sanctity of life and liberty of Black women is rarely the focus of Black freedom movements. Defying this omission, Black women have led movements demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Toyin Salau, Riah Milton, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and countless other Black women and girls. Across generations and centuries, their refusal to remain silent about violence against them led many to envisioning and building toward Black liberation through organizing and radical politics. Echoing the energy of Nina Simone’s searing protest song that inspired the title, America, Goddam is a call to action in our collective journey toward just futures.