"It's Not Right But It's Okay"

References

• For an excellent study of the politics of Black middle-class women's sexuality and desire, see Lisa B. Thompson, "Sex Talk: Sexual Politics and Black Middle Class Female Desire in Contemporary African-American Fiction" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2001).
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• Kelley charts the simultaneous rise of the Black middle class in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s coupled with increasing and dramatic Black poverty, unemployment rates, drug abuse, and AIDS cases in the African American community during this same period of time. Sec Robin D. G. Kelley, "Into the Fire: 1970 to the Present," in To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans, eds. Kelley and Earl Lewis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 543 614.
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• More recently, in the twenty-first century, recording artists such as Alicia Keys, Angie Stone, Charli Baltimore with Ja Rule, novelist Asha Bandele, and slam poets Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn have narratives that examine the intersections of class, gender, incarceration, and Black heterosexual desire with varying degrees of success. Sec for instance the video for Keys's ubiquitous "Fallin'" video in which the singer portrays a protagonist visiting her incarcerated lover; Angie Stone's single "Brotha" in which she dedicates the track to her "brothers in lock down"; and the perplexing video for Charli Baltimore's duct with Ja Rule "Down Chic" in which the former is sent to jail while Rule awaits her release. Alicia Keys, Fallin, J-Records, 2001, video; Angie Stone, "Brotha," Mahogany Soul, J-Records, 2001 ; Charli Baltimore featuring Ja Rule, Omen Chic, Murder Inc. Records, 2002, video. Sec also Bandele's controversial novel The Prisoner's Wife (2000) and the indie-film Slam, starring recording artist Williams and poet Sohn, who spar over gender and incarceration politics. Asha Bandele, The Prisoner's Wife (New York: Pocket Books, 2000); Slam, dir. Marc Levin, Vidmark/ Trimark, 1998, starring Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn.
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• Recently, Kelefa Sanneh has observed that the late Aaliyah Haughton "helped invent a style that might be called avant-garde R & B, and she did it by recording some of the least passionate love songs in recent memory her favorite tools were grace and precision." Sec Kelefa Sanneh, "A Reminder of the Real Aaliyah," New Your Times, 8 December 2001, 33.
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• In Morrison's Song of Solomon, the charactcr Hagar attempts to rebound from the trauma of unrequited love by immersing herself in the eonspieuous consumption of beauty culture, only to face her own self-destruction. See Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (New York: Plume, 1987). Susan Willis has argued that Morrison's depletion of Hagar demonstrates the ways in whieh "commodity culture mutilates black personhood." Susan Willis, "I Shop Therefore I Am: Is There a Place for Afro-American Culture in Commodity Culture?" in Changing Our Own Words: Essays tin Criticism, Theory and Writing hy Black Women, cd. Chcryl A. Wall (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 179.
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• Terry McMillan, Waiting to Exhale (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 3. All future references will be cited parenthetically.
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• Janet Mason Ellerby, "Deposing the Man of the House: Terry McMillan Rewrites the Family," MELUS 22, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 115. See also Rita B. Dandridge, "Debunking the Beauty Myth with Black Pop Culture in Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale," in Language, Rhythm, and Sound: Black Popular Cultures into the 21st Century, eds. Joseph K. Adjaye and Adrianne R. Andrews (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).
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• Thulani Davis, "Don't Worry, Be Buppie: Black Novelists Head for the Mainstream," Village Voice Literary Supplement, 85 (May 1990): 26 27.
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• See Ann duCille, "Blues Notes on Black Sexuality: Sex and the Texts of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 31 (1993): 418 443.
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• Destiny's Child, "Bills, Bills, Bills," lyrics by Kevin She'kspre Briggs, The Writing's On the Wall, Columbia Records, 1999.
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• Whitney Houston, album notes, My Lave Is Your Love, Arista Records, 1998.
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• Whitney Houston, "It's Not Right But It's Okay," by R. Jerkins, F. Jerkins III, L. Daniels, I. Phillips, and T. Estes, My Love.
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• Sparkle and R. Kelly, "Be Careful," Sparkle. lnterseope Records, 1998.
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• Kelly Price, "Friend of Mine," Soul of a Woman, Polygram Records, 1998.
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• Dwight Garner, "Sistahood is Lucrative," Salon, 18 April 1996, 2. http://archive.salon.corn/ weekly/blacklit960923.html.
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• See Farah Griffin, "Textual Healing: Claiming Black Women's Bodies, the Erotic and Resistance in Contemporary Novels of Slavery," Callaloo: A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters 19, no.2 (Spring, 1996): 519 536. Ann duCille, The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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• Dandridge, "Beauty Myth," 123.
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• Chris Rock, "Champagne," Roll with the New (Dreamworks Records, SKG 1997).
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