Mapping Black Women’s Geographies

Spanning three centuries, this book demonstrates a variety of archival practices to tell more expansive stories about Black women. It examines the life writing, records, and ephemera of Black women such as political reformer Sydna E. R. Francis, educators Edmonia Highgate and Lucy F. Simms, travel writer Nancy Prince, poet June Jordan, novelist Jesmyn Ward, and self-liberator Matilda Hawkins Tyler, enslaved by her own Jesuit church at St. Louis University.

The contributors use oral histories, data visualization, and biographical documents and narratives to map these and countless anonymized stories across geographic locations. Tracking the voluntary and forced movement of Black women alongside the places and spaces they inhabit gives us richer, more contextualized histories. The authors probe and answer how these women moved through and beyond systemic barriers and physical dangers while placing themselves at the center of change. The stories crystalize the joys, horrors, quotidian experiences, and endurance of marginalized lives. Each chapter illustrates ways to build archival and theoretical spaces that interrogate the many ways that Black women have navigated formidable and dangerous lands.

This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and researchers of comparative literature, gender studies, and Black studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

Kimberly Blockett is Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware, USA. She employs archives and cultural geography to examine Black women’s movement. The archival work for her recent edition (2021) and book (2024) on Zilpha Elaw was funded by the Ford Foundation, the NEH, and Harvard Divinity School.