Ann Powers, "Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music" (Dey St. Books, 2017)

In Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music (Dey St. Books, HarperCollins, 2017), Ann Powers explores the rich and, at times, unexpected intersections of love, sex, race, gender, sexuality, and American popular music. This heavily-researched book features colorful stories about sex, eroticism, and American music, while engaging source material in the realms of African American and American history, black feminist and womanist theory, American dance, and more. Good Booty begins in the 19th century in New Orleans’ Congo Square, and it ends with a discussion of Britney Spears and Beyoncé as cyborg and avatar, respectively. In other chapters, Powers engages early 20th-century American music and dance, eroticism in gospel music, sexuality and teen-girl rock and roll fandom, rock groupie culture, popular music in the early years of the AIDS crisis, and more.

Kimberly Mack holds a Ph.D. in English from UCLA, and she is an Assistant Professor of African-American literature at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. Her book, Fade to Black: Blues Music and the Art of Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White, is under contract with the University of Massachusetts Press. She is also a music journalist who has contributed her work to national and international publications, including Music Connection, Relix, Village Voice, PopMatters, and Hot Press.

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