Born in Seattle, Washington on October 2, 1973, but raised in Charlottesvile and Chester, Virginia, Melissa V. Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University where she is the founding director of the project on gender, race, and politics in the South. Her previous book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, won the 2005 W. E. B. Du Bois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and the 2005 Best Book Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

Besides being a columnist for The Nation Magazine, Dr. Harris-Perry frequently appears as a guest or fill-in host on MSNBC on The Thomas Roberts Show, Up with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. She is also a regular commentator for many print and radio sources both around the U.S. and abroad.

Melissa lives in New Orleans with her husband, James Perry, and her daughter, Parker. Here, she reflects on her life and career and on American culture and politics while discussing her new book, Sister Citizen.

Read an AALBC.com Interview with Melissa Harris-Perry [Oct, 2011]

 

 

 

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
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Hardcover: 392 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (September 20, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300165412
ISBN-13: 978-0300165418
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches

A 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominated Book

Nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction

Read an AALBC.com Book Review

Jezebel's sexual lasciviousness, Mammy's devotion, and Sapphire's outspoken anger—these are among the most persistent stereotypes that black women encounter in contemporary American life. Hurtful and dishonest, such representations force African American women to navigate a virtual crooked room that shames them and shapes their experiences as citizens. Many respond by assuming a mantle of strength that may convince others, and even themselves, that they do not need help. But as a result, the unique political issues of black women are often ignored and marginalized.

In this groundbreaking book, Melissa V. Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women's political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Not a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting, or ideology, Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America, from the anonymous survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the current First Lady of the United States.

 

Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought
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Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 29, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691114056
ISBN-13: 978-0691114057
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches

Winner of the 2005 Best Book Award, Racial and Ethnic Political Identities, Ideologies and Theories Category of the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section, American Political Science Association.

Co-Winner of the 2005 W.E.B. Du Bois Book Award, National Conference of Black Political Scientists

What is the best way to understand black political ideology? Just listen to the everyday talk that emerges in public spaces, suggests Melissa Harris-Lacewell. And listen this author has--to black college students talking about the Million Man March and welfare, to Southern, black Baptists discussing homosexuality in the church, to black men in a barbershop early on a Saturday morning, to the voices of hip-hop music and Black Entertainment Television.

Using statistical, experimental, and ethnographic methods Barbershops, Bibles, and B.E.T offers a new perspective on the way public opinion and ideologies are formed at the grassroots level. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of black politics by shifting the focus from the influence of national elites in opinion formation to the influence of local elites and people in daily interaction with each other. Arguing that African Americans use community dialogue to jointly develop understandings of their collective political interests, Harris-Lacewell identifies four political ideologies that constitute the framework of contemporary black political thought: Black Nationalism, Black Feminism, Black Conservatism and Liberal Integrationism. These ideologies, the book posits, help African Americans to understand persistent social and economic inequality, to identify the significance of race in that inequality, and to devise strategies for overcoming it.