ABSTRACT

This book introduces a space for the interjection of the voices of Black women in exploration of hybridity as a negotiation of identity positions in talk. The identity of an-other Black is at one and the same time then, both fluid and dependent on a contingent essentialism. These observations were summarized after listening to and transcribing taped conversations between groups of friends, colleagues and family members about their life experiences. Based on these conversations, the book argues that hybrid Black identities are constructed in talk on lived experience. It brings together a range of ideas about identity, hybridity, reflexivity and talk, to foreground a neglected dimension of the debate on hybrid identities. The book focuses on how Black women's talk helps us to think through hybridity. It then concerns how thinking through hybridity helps us to think 'race', 'a politics of skin' and 'community'.