In 'Black Woman Redefined,' author calls out her sisters

If black women don't shift their conventional ways of thinking, joy will never be theirs, warns journalist and South Jersey native Sophia A. Nelson.

And that is awful.

"The journey to happiness is a marathon, not a sprint," Nelson said recently. "We all have to take a good look at ourselves and be willing to take it."

This journey is at the core of Nelson's new and much-talked-about book, Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama. In 11 chapters, Nelson takes on issues like dating outside the race, the impact of the church on black women, a tougher-than-nails attitude, and rape. Her message throughout: Let bad beliefs go in order to achieve fulfillment. 

Black Woman Redefined isn't a finger-wagging list of do's and don'ts like Steve Harvey's New York Times bestseller, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

"It's more like The Secret meets Eat, Pray, Love," Nelson recently said, her high-pitched voice rising with compassion. "This is a big book of love. It's a blueprint of how we should live."

Nelson says her main inspiration for Black Woman Redefined is Michelle Obama. Before her, Nelson says, black women hadn't had many freethinking, beautiful, upper-middle-class role models. That absence can be harder to take than a bad relaxer.

The book feels timely because nationally, the images of black women - especially the middle class - are in a messy state.

In the last year, nearly every major network has aired an evening news program asking why educated black women are chronically single. Then there is the reality TV train wreck. NeNe on Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta has become the voice for women with middle-class trappings stymied by lower-class tendencies.

"We are being defined by what makes us undesirable," Nelson said.

At the same time, other authors are challenging what it means to be black in America. Last week, Stanford professor Ralph Richard Banks' new book, Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone, was high on the talked-about list, as the author urged black women to go outside of their boxes and date white men.

And MSNBC correspondent Touré is making the rounds for his new book, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now. The book examines the lives of Generation Xers who struggle with acknowledging history and letting history go.

Nelson's core message is all about being aware and then releasing, too. But unlike Touré, who talks about blackness as defined among members of Generation X, Nelson centers her discussion on black women of all ages.

"I'm writing from the perspective of a black woman," Nelson says. "Frankly, I can't get caught up in what the brothers are saying and what they want. That's not the issue. It's, what am I doing so that I am a sexy, whole, sensual woman."

Sexuality is a heavy topic for many black women, as media portrayals tend toward extremes ranging from hottie to workhorse. Nelson writes of the slavery-era mythology that "has painted us as the always happy and robust Aunt Jemima, the always sexually available and complicit Sally Hemings . . . or the always dutiful Mammy." That legacy shows up in pernicious ways: Only 46 percent of the accomplished black women Nelson surveyed for the book connected their overall sense of well-being to being in an intimate, loving, committed sexual relationship.

Educated black women need to let these extremes go, advises Nelson. It sounds easy, but when generations of women have adopted this way of thinking for survival, it may feel like they are leaving the most familiar parts of themselves behind.

And that's scary.

"The work has to start with self," Nelson said. "I'm calling black women to a higher calling."