"Like Men They Stood": Black Male Vulnerability as Resistance to Stereotypes in Fiction Written by African American Women

Know about the book -

"Like Men They Stood": Black Male Vulnerability as Resistance to Stereotypes in Fiction Written by African American Women is written by Tuula Kolehmainen and published by BRILL. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 9004746366 (ISBN 10) and 9789004746367 (ISBN 13).

What if vulnerability could reshape how we understand Black masculinity? “Like Men They Stood” reveals how late twentieth-century African American women authors represent Black men in ways that disrupt familiar readings of their portrayals as purely stereotypical. Through reframed interpretations, the book uncovers how Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Naylor deploy Black male vulnerability as a powerful mode of resistance, troubling public and literary debates of stereotypical depictions of Black men in their fiction. By bringing Black male studies into dialogue with Black feminist and womanist thought, “Like Men They Stood” opens new ways of interpreting race, gender, and power in African American literature—and invites you to rethink how Black masculinity is represented, read, and understood.