Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Productions

Abstract

First edition. African American playwright, actor, television producer and filmmaker Tyler Perry is an American cultural phenomenon. Perry has made over half a billion dollars through the development of films, plays, and television series that center storylines about black women, black communities and black religion. The success of a Tyler Perry Production, coupled with Perry's participation in a range of media and in multiple roles as creator and actor, position him as a significant site of black religious and cultural expression, and thus critical inquiry and reflection. "Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry's Productions" examines Perry's works from interdisciplinary perspectives and provides a necessary response to Perry's current prominence regarding black representation, black religion and black cultural production. Foreword; Emilie M. Townes -- Introduction; LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Tamura Lomax, and Duncan -- -- Part I: Filmography -- -- Part II: Theology, Spirituality and Black Popular Religious Imaginations -- 1: Tyler Perry Reads Scripture; Nyasha Junior -- 2: Signifying Love and Embodied Relationality: Towards a Womanist Theological Anthropology; Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan -- 3: Jesus Will Fix It, After While: The Purpose and Role of Gospel Music in Tyler Perry Productions; Lisa Allen-McLaurin -- 4: Screening God; Andrea C. White -- -- Part III: Theorizing Intersecting Identities and (Re)Envisioning Black Womanhood -- 5: A People That Would Take Care of Ourselves: Tyler Perry's Vision of Community and Gender Relations; Yolande M.S. Tomlinson -- 6: It aint where you comin' from, honey: Class, Social Mobility and Marriage in Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion; Carol B. Duncan -- 7: Mad Black Bitches and Lady-like Saints: Representations of African American Women in Tyler Perry Films; Tamura A. Lomax -- 8: (Re)Mediating Black Womanhood: Tyler Perry, Black Feminist Cultural Criticism and the Politics of Appropriation; Whitney Peoples -- -- Part IV: The Politics of Performance -- 9: Pause, Auntie Momma!: Reading Religion in Tyler Perry's Fat Drag; LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant -- 10: Madea vs. Medea: Agape, and the Militarist or Murderous Maternal; Joy James -- -- Part V: Black Women as Religio-Cultural Capital -- 11: Tyler Perry and the (Mis)Representation of Religious Morality; Terrion L. Williamson -- 12: Talking Back and Taking My 'Amens' with Me: Tyler Perry and the Narrative Colonization of Black Women's Stories; Brittney Cooper -- 13: Do You Want to Be Well?: The Gospel Play, Womanist Theology, and Tyler Perry's Artistic Project; Robert J. Patterson -- -- Afterword: T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting.