Overview
A Taste for Brown Sugar boldly takes on representations of black women's sexuality in the porn industry. It is based on Mireille Miller-Young's extensive archival research and her interviews with dozens of women who have worked in the adult entertainment industry since the 1980s. The women share their thoughts about desire and eroticism, black women's sexuality and representation, and ambition and the need to make ends meet. Miller-Young documents their interventions into the complicated history of black women's sexuality, looking at individual choices, however small-a costume, a gesture, an improvised line-as small acts of resistance, of what she calls ""illicit eroticism."" Building on the work of other black feminist theorists, and contributing to the field of sex work studies, she seeks to expand discussion of black women's sexuality to include their eroticism and desires, as well as their participation and representation in the adult entertainment industry. Miller-Young wants the voices of black women sex workers heard, and the decisions they make, albeit often within material and industrial constraints, recognized as their own.
Full Product Details
Author: Mireille Miller-Young
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.748kg
ISBN: 9780822358282
ISBN 10: 082235828
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 08 December 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
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Reviews
A Taste for Brown Sugar is a courageous and bold book that shifts the discourse on the contested history of race and porn. Miller-Young's rigorous historical and ethnographic research provides a platform for black women in the porn industry to articulate--and thus to theorize--why they choose to work in this industry. Not only does this book give these women agency over their own sexuality, but it also disrupts the 'good vs bad' ideological quagmire that has dogged debates about pornography for decades. A Taste for Brown Sugar is a game changer. --E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity
A Taste for Brown Sugar is a thorough and compelling look at a subject steeped in society's anxiety and imagination: black women in pornography. Mireille Miller-Young dives head first into a thorny topic with clear, nuanced thinking. This book tackles complicated issues of race, sex work, feminism, pleasure, and representation in a rigorous, thoughtful way. Finally: scholarship that centers black women's labor and ideas in both academia and the sex industries and gives crucial voice to underrepresented workers and feminist thinkers. Miller-Young's approach is intersectional, engaging, and, above all, accessible to scholars and a general readers alike. This book will enrage you, enlighten you, and make you rethink everything you know about race and sex. --Tristan Taormino, author of True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion
Author Information
Mireille Miller-Young is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a coeditor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure.
