Details, and offers vignettes to illustrate, how patriarchy and white supremacy have restricted Black women at work, both historically and currently. Around water coolers and over glasses of wine, Black women come together and process the ways in which their labor is taken for granted and their excellence called into question. Black Women at Work: On Refusal and Recovery makes the direct connection between these contemporary experiences and the long legacy of Black labor exploitation. Through the trafficking and enslavement of Africans, European Americans laid the inhumane foundation of their present-day wealth and privilege and established oppressive labor dynamics for workers that persist to this day. In Black Women at Work, Wendi S. Williams moves the conversation beyond the stubborn audacity of inequity, focusing instead on the powerful history and example of Black women’s labor and refusal practices and on the potent role that choice and voice can play in dismantling seemingly impenetrable systems of unfairness. Through the interweaving of personal narratives and social media reflections, Williams crafts a larger narrative of recovery and refusal that articulates a liberatory path toward recovery and reclamation through refusal—a path that will ultimately help to bring us all closer to freedom. Offers a common-sense, theoretically based systems analysis of Black women's experiences in the workplace Articulates reasonable and realistic approaches to remedying intersectional inequity for Black women (and others) in the workplace Provides a generalizable framework to make individual and systemic changes and/or cope within a range of employment contexts Includes vignettes from dozens of women the author has counseled or worked with in diversity groups Ties into contemporary activism, such as #BlackGirlsMagic and #ListentoBlackWomen

Increasingly, social, cultural, and political discourse is deeming Black women and girls to be a critical group to engage. We are told their lives should matter, and yet, there is also overwhelming evidence that Black women and girls continue to be what Malcolm X declared, "The most neglected person in America". This critical volume engages a conversation at the intersection of the fields of education and psychology among recognized Black women scholars that contemporizes the discourse about Black women’s and girls’ diversity, their sociocultural contexts, and various approaches to communal and clinical work with them to support their mental health, wellness, and thrivance. WE Matter!: Intersectional Anti- Racist Feminist Interventions with Black Girls and Women is a significant new contribution to Black Studies, Mental Health, and Gender Studies, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Sociology, Psychology, Education, and Politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Women & Therapy.

Increasingly, social, cultural, and political discourse is deeming Black women and girls to be a critical group to engage. We are told their lives should matter, and yet, there is also overwhelming evidence that Black women and girls continue to be what Malcolm X declared, "The most neglected person in America". This critical volume engages a conversation at the intersection of the fields of education and psychology among recognized Black women scholars that contemporizes the discourse about Black women's and girls' diversity, their sociocultural contexts, and various approaches to communal and clinical work with them to support their mental health, wellness, and thrivance. WE Matter!: Intersectional Anti- Racist Feminist Interventions with Black Girls and Women is a significant new contribution to Black Studies, Mental Health, and Gender Studies, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Sociology, Psychology, Education, and Politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Women & Therapy.

The position of George Eliot's poetry within Victorian poetry and within her own canon is crucial for an accurate picture of the writer, as Wendy S. Williams shows in her in-depth examination of Eliot's poetry and her role as poetess. Williams argues that even more clearly than her fiction, Eliot's poetry reveals the development of her belief in sympathy as a replacement for orthodox religious views. With knowledge of the Bible and a firm understanding of society's expectations for female authorship, Eliot consciously participated in a tradition of women poets who relied on feminine piety and poetry to help refine society through compassion and fellow-feeling. Williams examines Eliot's poetry in relationship to her gender and sexual politics and her shifting religious beliefs, showing that Eliot's views on gender and religion informed her adoption of the poetess persona. By taking into account Eliot's poetess treatment of community and motherhood, Williams suggests, readers come to view her not only as a writer of fiction, an intellectual, and a social commentator, but also as a woman who longed to nurture, participate in, and foster human relationships.