Mammies no more : the changing image of black women on stage and screen

Mammies No More explores the ways in which mainstream American plays and films have reflected and helped to reinforce stereotypes of black women. It also shows how African American women playwrights and filmakers have subverted those stereotypes by creating more realistic characters. From Minstrel shows of the mid-nineteenth century to D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, from the movie version ofGone with the Wind to Spike Lee'sShe's Gotta Have It and comtemporary music videos, Anderson shows how portrayals of black women as ignorant mammies, sexually voracious jezebels or coquettish, tragically flawed mulattas have persisted over time. Meanwhile, works by black women, such as Lorriane Hansbery's A Raisin In the Sun and Julies Dashe's Daughters of the Dust, have resisted these stereotypes, showing black women in more positve and realistic ways.