Light and Legacies

"Lights and Legacies exemplifies what it means to hold Black girls and Black girlhood warmly and with incisive intentionality. Janaka Bowman Lewis masterfully explores contours of Black girls' lives, resistance, and possibilities and brilliantly excavates Black girl mattering. With beautiful prose and impeccable attention to the archive of representation, Lewis gifts us one of the most engaging and rigorous texts in the growing field of Black girlhood studies."—Treva B. Lindsey, professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, The Ohio State Univeristy, and author of America Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice and Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, DC

"Dr. Janaka Bowman Lewis's thoughtful consideration of narratives of Black girlhood is as thoroughly researched as it is elegantly crafted. With a deep and wide-ranging archive of material—from early African American writing through the 21st century and examining fiction, poetry, and visual texts—this study offers clarifying insights to the ways that representations of Black girlhood operate not only as freedom narratives but also as depictions of self-recognition, self-construction, and cultural and political development. Framed through an intimate writing style that blends personal narrative with critical analysis, Dr. Bowman Lewis's study is a must-read for scholars and students of Black literature, Black history, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of not only the answers but also the deep abiding questions that are revealed when we attend to the ways that Black girls 'Live, Shine, and Play.'"—McKinley Melton, associate professor of English, Gettysburg College