Misbehaving at the Crossroads

Essays & Writings

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780063246652
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads.

Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression.

In Misbehaving at the Crossroads, Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life. She charts voyages of Black girlhood to womanhood and the currents buffeting these journeys, including the difficulties of racially gendered oppression, the challenges of documenting Black women’s ancestry; the adultification of Black girls; the irony of Black female respectability politics; the origins of Womanism/Black feminism; and resistance to White supremacy and patriarchy. As Jeffers shows with empathy and wisdom, naming difficult historical truths represents both Blues and transcendence, a crossroads that speaks.

Necessary and sharply observed, provocative and humane, and full of the insight and brilliance that has characterized her poetry and fiction, Misbehaving at the Crossroads illustrates the life of one extraordinary Black woman—and her extraordinary foremothers.  

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Honorée’s Family Tree
• I: In Search of Our Mothers’ Crossroads
• 1: That Day in January
• 2: Our Fathers Who Rewrote Our Mothers
• 3: Blues for the African Woman Whose Name Has Been Erased
• 4: Paper Trail
• 5: A Brief Note Concerning Womanist Identity
• 6: In Search of Our Mothers’ Crossroads
• 7: Altar Call
• II: A Daughter’s Theory
• 8: Three Sisters: A Fairy Tale
• 9: Things Ain’t Always Gone Be This Way
• 10: Blues for Roe
• 11: In Search of Our Mothers’ Justifications
• 12: Going to Meet Mr. Baldwin
• 13: Ode to SWATS (All Day)
• 14: Trellie Lee’s Baby
• III: Red Dirt: Interlude
• 15: From the Old Slave Shack: Memoirs of a Teacher
• IV: Of Power and Other Innovations
• 16: Offspring Follows Belly
• 17: History Is a Trigger Warning
• 18: Imaginary Letter to the Now-Dead White Male Poet Who Might Have Given Me the Blues
• 19: A Brief Note Concerning My Late Brother-Friend’s Usage of the N-Word as a Verb
• 20: a Black body is somebody
• 21: Blues for Moynihan
• 22: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms of Respectability
• 23: A Brief Note About the Election of US Presidents, Annoying Progressive White Folks, and the Long-Suffering Understanding of Black Women
• 24: Very Real (Open) Letter to Mr. Barack Obama Concerning His Speech Accusing Black Men of Sexism Because Some Hadn’t Planned to Vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 Election
• V: Blues for Boys, Blues for Men
• 25: The Little Boy Who Will Be My Father
• 26: My Life with Roots
• 27: Blues for Boys, Blues for Men
• 28: Lexicon
• 29: Blues for Paradise
• 30: Post-Divorce, Post-African
• VI: Misbehaving Women
• 31: A Brief Note Concerning Another Late Brother-Friend Who Led Me to This Discussion of the Black Woman as Soul Sister Shapeshifter in These United States
• 32: In Search of Our Mothers’ Handles
• 33: Imaginary Letter to the White Lady Professor Who Might Have Extended an Invitation to Read Poetry at Her Prestigious University
• 34: Blues for the Sanctuary
• 35: Toni Morrison Did That
• 36: In Search of Our Mothers’ Tar Baby
• 37: Imaginary Letter to the White Lady Colleague Who Might Have Sat Next to Me at One of the Now Eliminated University Workshops for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training
• 38: On Being Fannie Lou Hamer Tired
• 39: Driving Interstate West through Georgia
• VII: In Search of Our Mothers’ Forgiveness
• 40: August 2023
• 41: September 2023
• 42: October 2023
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Notes
• About the Author
• Also by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• Copyright
• About the Publisher