The Souths in Her: Black Women Writers and Choreographers and the Poetics of Transmutation
By Nicole M. Morris Johnson
Columbia UP, 2026
ISBN: 9780231219686
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-souths-in-her/9780231219686/
Since the Middle Passage, the intellectual and physical freedom of Black women in the United States and the Caribbean has been constrained. Yet Black women writers, artists, choreographers, and performers have contested pervasive political, cultural, and discursive silencing by drawing on the traditions and creative visions of multiple Souths: the Southern United States and the Caribbean, as well as Africa.
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In The Souths in Her—a phrase borrowed from Ntozake Shange—Nicole M. Morris Johnson shows how key Black women artists transformed the enclosing narrative frames imposed on them, developing new forms of creative expression informed by the lived experiences and submerged histories of women across the Africana southern world. She analyzes the intertwined relationship between movement and writing in the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Dianne McIntyre, Maryse Condé, and Shange, among others. Morris Johnson demonstrates that although the central role of motion reinforced perceptions of primitivity that relegated Black women and the South to a space outside modernity, it was in fact crucial to their formal innovations. For these writers and choreographers, unexpected encounters with unfamiliar traditions and creative visions of multiple Souths catalyzed formal experimentation and movements for liberation. Considering the violence routinely inflicted on Black women alongside their artistic innovations, this book reveals a transmuted South that is rich in techniques for weaving liberatory works. Illuminating Black women’s singular contributions to Black modernity, The Souths in Her offers new frames for understanding their embodied and textual creative expression.
"The Souths in Her offers an important exploration of how Black women artists have used self-expression to counter misperceptions about them and their legacies in the South. Through rich analysis of Black women writers and choreographers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Maryse Condé, Ntozake Shange, and Jamaica Kincaid, alongside contemporary artists like Allison Janae Hamilton, Urban Bush Women, and Akwaeke Emezi, this book showcases how they achieve new “expressive horizons” and chart new territory to move freely." —Soyica Diggs Colbert, author of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry
"Taking her title from Ntozake Shange, Nicole M. Morris Johnson explores various Souths: the worlds that Black women artists, primarily writers and choreographers, made to counter silencing. Authoritative and beautifully written, The Souths in Her understands Black women’s art as emancipatory in its broadest and bravest forms, delving into feminist cultural expression out of the Middle Passage to illuminate its creative power and impressive diasporic reach." —Thadious M. Davis, author of Understanding Alice Walker
"The Souths in Her is a brilliantly conceptualized examination of women writers and artists of African descent from the Caribbean and the United States whose contributions boldly confront confining narratives that have typically centered Black masculinity. Morris Johnson's beautifully written book refines and expands these methodologies to center Black women, Africa, and its diasporas. An outstanding and exciting achievement in Southern studies." —Riché Richardson, author of Emancipation's Daughters: Reimagining Black Femininity and the National Body
Nicole M. Morris Johnson is an assistant professor of English at the University at Buffalo.
