"Like Men They Stood": Black Male Vulnerability as Resistance to Stereotypes in Fiction Written by African American Women

What if vulnerability could reshape how we understand Black masculinity? “Like Men They Stood” reveals how late twentieth-century African American women authors represent Black men in ways that disrupt familiar readings of their portrayals as purely stereotypical. Through reframed interpretations, the book uncovers how Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Naylor deploy Black male vulnerability as a powerful mode of resistance, troubling public and literary debates of stereotypical depictions of Black men in their fiction. By bringing Black male studies into dialogue with Black feminist and womanist thought, “Like Men They Stood” opens new ways of interpreting race, gender, and power in African American literature—and invites you to rethink how Black masculinity is represented, read, and understood.

Tuula Kolehmainen, Ph.D. (2022), is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the John Morton Center for North American Studies, University of Turku. In addition to African American literature, her research interests include the intersections of race, gender, and humor in U.S. culture.