PRAISE FOR AINT I A DIVA?
A fierce, full-bodied examination of our queens indelible contributions to pop culture and feminism. Read it!
JANET MOCK, author of Surpassing Certainty:
What My Twenties Taught Me
Proving himself a worthy member of the BeyHive, Kevin Allred takes us on a journey through Beyoncs greatest hits and expansive careerpeeling back their multiple layers to explore gender, race, sexuality, and power in todays modern world. A fun, engaging, and important read for long-time Beyonc fans and newcomers alike.
FRANCHESCA RAMSEY, author of Well, That Escalated Quickly:
Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist
Aint I a Diva? explores the phenomenon of Beyonc while explicitly championing not only her immense talent and grace but what we can learn from it. In this celebration of Beyonc, and through her, other Black women, Allred is giving us room to be exactly who we are so that maybe we, too, can stop the world then carry on!
KEAH BROWN, author of The Pretty One:
On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love with Me
Kevin Allred is a writer who approaches the topic of Beyoncs role and impact on the culture with nuance and skill. Keenly aware of his position and privilege as a white cis male, Allred centers and amplifies Black feminist voices in his writing as he explores themes of race, gender, and class in Beyoncs career. Applying a feminist reading to her music, Allred illuminates and introduces ideas that are timelier now than ever before. This is a must-read for any fan of Beyonc and of fascinating feminist discourse.
ZEBA BLAY, senior culture writer, HuffPost
AINT I A
DIVA?
Beyonc and the Power of Pop Culture Pedagogy
KEVIN ALLRED
Foreword by Cheryl Clarke
Published in 2019 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
feministpress.org
First Feminist Press edition 2019
Copyright 2019 by Kevin Allred
Foreword copyright 2019 by Cheryl Clarke
All rights reserved.
| This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. |
| This book is supported in part by a grant from the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. |
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing June 2019
Cover illustration by Emerald Pellot
Cover and text design by Drew Stevens
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Allred, Kevin, 1981- author.
Title: Aint I a diva? : Beyonc and the power of pop culture pedagogy / Kevin Allred ; foreword by Cheryl Clarke.
Description: First Feminist Press edition. | New York, NY : Feminist Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048370 (print) | LCCN 2018060604 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932610 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932603 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Beyonc, 1981---Criticism and interpretation. | Popular music--History and criticism. | Sex in music. | Feminism and music.
Classification: LCC ML420.K675 (ebook) | LCC ML420.K675 A73 2019 (print) | DDC 782.42164092--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048370
To all the PB students over the years. For being open, fearless, creative, and endlessly curious.
To all the Black women writers, artists, and activists mentioned within, and more. For opening my eyes.
And, of course, to Beyonc Giselle Knowles-Carter. For everything.
FOREWORD
ARENT I AN ARCHIVE?
WRITING THIS FOREWORD TO KEVIN ALLREDS AINT I a Diva?: Beyonc and the Power of Pop Culture Pedagogy brings me almost full circle. Feminist and lesbian-feminist pressesfrom Conditions magazine (19761990) and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press (19801992), to Firebrand Books (19842000) and Sinister Wisdom Press (1976present)have supported my work since 1977. The Feminist Press (1970present) has been part of that history and still is.
By placing her own body on display, even while also expressing agency and pleasure Beyonc highlights the additional constraints placed on Black women trying to access a sex-positive feminism and a different politics that re-creates empowered sexuality with Black women at the center. (16465, emphasis mine)
I cherish these watchwords of Black feminism: body, agency, pleasure, sex-positive, different, empowered sexuality, and putting Black women at the center. And does Beyonc give us all this? Kevin Allred fervently believes so. And I want to believe with him. Anyone who, like Allred, is such a staunch believer in Black women and Black feminism is all right with me.
Entering graduate school and developing a deepening queer identity and feminist political consciousness collided with Allreds desire to link Beyoncs work to larger phenomena and politics (xxi). And Allred challenges us throughout Aint I a Diva? to do likewise. Beyoncs work becomes a portfolio of Black feminist thought for Allred and for students in his class. He uses the prodigious Black pop icon to reference most of the equally prodigious Black feminist thinkers/speakers since Sojourner Truth and her fabled Aint I a Woman? declamation. He draws partially upon it for the title of his book. (Although historian Deborah Gray White claims that Sojourner Truth said, Arent I a woman, not Aint I a woman. Thus, the title of her first groundbreaking book on Black women in slavery: Arnt I a Woman (1985). In Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (1996), historian Nell Irvin Painter claims Truth might never have said these words at allaint or arent. Ill venture Beyoncin all her middle-class Blacknesswould say arent.) Allred also takes the diva designation of Aint I a Diva? from Beyoncs gangsta-girl video of the same name. Diva is a female version of a hustla, so Beyonc says in the video, while she and her backups reprise the lyrics: Im-a a diva. And she is. Diva Beyonc swaggers in very high heels down the middle of a street, chewing gumher favorite tough-chick gestureand setting a car on fire.
Studying Bey videos became a nightly regimen for Allred, as he compiled and collected information and materials for future use. That future use became the course Politicizing Beyonc, which may have contributed to a burgeoning academic field known as Beyonc Studies. And there is plenty to study, of which Allred presents a trove of evidence. He claims a diva is intersectional (5) because, as he demonstrates, Beyonc integrates education, pop culture, and honest conversation across difference, history, and politics, in solidarity with a longer Black feminist trajectory and deep appreciation of the sources (xi). In the appendix is his syllabus, which is a generous act and will enable anyone who has the courage and savvy to instruct and self-instruct.
