| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
ix, 308 pages ; 22 cm |
| Contents |
The Women Who Were Blind -- Spare the Rod -- Between the Headache and the Heartthrob -- He May Not Come When You Want Him -- Dusting the Child from Our Bodies -- A Lie Don't Care Who Tells It -- Catching Flies -- Love and the Southern Behemoth -- Fairy Dust and Legends -- Going to Church Don't Make You a Hymnal -- We Got It Honest. |
| Summary |
"Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to--true ones of course--but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away. Mouton writes, "The phrases of my mother and grandmother began to seem less colloquial and more tied to stories that had been lost along the way....Mythmaking isn't a lie. It is our moment to take the privilege of our own creativity to fill in the gaps that colonization has stolen from us. It is us choosing to write the tales that our children pull strength from. It is hijacking history for the ignorance in its closets. This, a truth that must start with the women." Mouton's memoir Black Chameleon is a song of praise and an elegy for Black womanhood. With a poet's gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America. Of the moment yet timeless, playful but incendiary, Mouton has staked out new territory in the memoir form."-- Provided by publisher. |
| Subject |
Mouton, Deborah D. E. E. P.
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African American women -- Biography.
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African Americans -- Biography.
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African American women -- Social conditions.
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African Americans -- Social conditions.
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Myth.
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HISTORY / United States / General.
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African American women. (OCoLC)fst00799438
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African American women -- Social conditions.
(OCoLC)fst00799467
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African Americans. (OCoLC)fst00799558
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African Americans -- Social conditions.
(OCoLC)fst00799698
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Myth. (OCoLC)fst01031678
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| Genre/Form |
Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
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Autobiographies.
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| Added Title |
Memory, womanhood, and myth |
| Other Form: |
Online version: Mouton, Deborah D. E. E. P. Black chameleon. First edition New York, New York : Holt, 2023 9781250827869 (DLC) 2022036205 |
| ISBN |
9781250827852 (hardcover) |
|
125082785X (hardcover) |
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9781250827869 electronic book |
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