In a Different Chord: Interpreting the Relations Among Black Female Sexuality, Agency, and the Blues.

BLUES music; AFRICAN American women; AGENT (Philosophy); AFRICAN Americans; MUSIC; AFRICAN American literature

Presents a cross-examination of blues works by Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, Mari Evans and Natalie Cole to represent the blues' metasexual dimensions. Possibilities the blues have created for black American women to achieve actual and symbolic liberation; Hughes' classification of blues as thematically either masculine or feminine; Concepts of empowerment and agency in relation to black women and the blues.