Julia Jordan-Zachery’s book explores the politics of Black womanhood and what is perceived as “acceptable” Black womanhood. Divided into six substantive chapters, Jordan-Zachery’s book makes use of multiple modes of evidence—speeches, magazine articles, and blog posts—to examine the issues of HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and mental illness. In examining each piece of evidence, she asks which Black women’s perspectives are missing from the conversation—“who are the shadow bodies?”. She ultimately finds that it is the Black women affected by HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and mental illness who are left out of the conversation and are ultimately excluded from the political narrative because they do not “fit” scripts conventionally assigned to Black women’s bodies.

In chapter 1, Jordan-Zachery lays out the theoretical framework of the book. She relies on multiple theories to encapsulate the political experiences of Black women, namely intersectionality, muted group theory, and body studies. The way in which she places...

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