Where Author and Auteur Meet

This essay examines black women's transition from cultural consumers to artistic producers in Martha Southgate's under-studied novel Third Girl from the Left. Analyzing the text's exploration of black women's misrepresentation in popular film and mainstream narratives of history, this essay argues that Southgate rewrites the script of black female desire beyond sexual subjugation and racial stereotype over the course of the novel's three generations of mothers and daughters. Southgate reveals the importance of black women controlling the narrative of black female subjectivity portrayed on the movie screen. Moreover, she illustrates the significance of black women's performance of subjectivity in their own lives. By charting a "reel" and "real" history of the erotic, Southgate not only explores the repercussions of movie-watching and movie-making for black female spectators, but she also demands that her readers participate in the critical interpretive work necessary for recognizing the difference between "fact" and "fiction." Her novel reveals that such cultural work is important for interrogating and reconfiguring past and present representations of black female eroticism. This essay looks at the nuances in Third Girl from the Left by placing the novel in the context of its explicit movie allusions as well as films with which the text is in tacit dialogue

Aesthetics · Art · Eroticism · Girl · Human sexuality · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Subjectivity · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology

• Uses of the Erotic

  Audre Lorde•Feminism and pornography•2000

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• Inspiriting Influences

  Claudia Tate, Michael Awkward et al.•Tulsa Studies in Women s Literature•1990

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• Black Spectatorship

  Mamadou Diawara•Screen•1988

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• Struggles for Representation

  Mark A Reid•American Literature•2000

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• Interrogating Postfeminism

  Angela Mcrobbie, Yvonne Tasker et al.•Interrogating Postfeminism•2007

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• Negotiating Difference

  Shanna Greene Benjamin, Michael Awkward•African American Review•1999

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• Invisibility Blues

  Open Access•Lola Young, Michelle Wallace•Feminist Review•1992

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• The Returns of 'Cleopatra Jones

  Jennifer Devere Brody•Signs: Journal of Women in…•1999

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• Afro Images

  Angela Y Davis•Critical Inquiry•1994

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• Negroes Laughing at Themselves? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity

  Jacqueline Stewart•Critical Inquiry•2003

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