Table of Contents

• Introduction: For the Texas Bama Femme
• Family Album: Making Lemonade Out of Marriage, Motherhood, and Southern Tradition
  • Queen Bee Blues
  • Mama Said Shoot
• “Most Bomb Pussy”: Toward a Black Feminist Pleasure Politics
  • Love the Grind
  • Unapologetically Femme
• Calling for Freedom: Black Women’s Activism in the US South
  • Freedom, Too
  • I Came to Slay
• Outro: I Know Beyoncé Loves Black Femmes
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

About the Author

Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley is an associate professor of African and African Diaspora studies and associate director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches the popular course Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism. Tinsley is the author of Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature and Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders.

Reviews

Lemonade is proving to be a modern Mona Lisa, a work of art ripe for both academic analysis and inner reflection—modes Tinsley mixes and remixes in this lively, erudite memoir-cum-cultural critique that uses Queen Bey’s seminal album to examine her own life as a black Southern femme.
*O, The Oprah Magazine*

An incisive, spiraling celebration of Southern black women.
*Publishers Weekly*

You'll come away from each chapter with a new appreciation of what Beyoncé has meant to women, particularly black women, across the country.
*The Current*

Sure to appeal to scholars and pop-culture enthusiasts alike, this provocative book works to blur the lines between straight and gay black feminism. . . Lively and intelligent reading.
*Kirkus Reviews*

[Translates] the visual and audio to another plane entirely, and will undoubtedly inspire much rewatching and relistening.
*Booklist*

Tinsley...brings tremendous gusto to her critique of Beyonce's 2016 album Lemonade.
*Publishers Weekly Holiday Gift Guide 2018*

Tinsley's…critical analysis of black women's sexuality, gender, and identity through the gaze of Beyoncé and the Lemonade album is especially important as her queer black perspective dissects Queen Bey in a way that only a black women-loving black woman could.
*The Feminist Press*

[Tinsley's] approach…keeps the text accessible to music fans while underlining the book's central thesis: that Lemonade is one of the great black feminist works of this century and it deserves an exalted place in the canon of women's studies.
*austin360*

Part memoir, part pop-culture scholarship, this slim, engaging book uses Beyoncé as a springboard for wide-ranging ruminations on sexuality, motherhood, and activism, among other big ideas.
*Texas Observer*

Beyoncé in Formation is a remarkably pleasing book. It takes the reader by the hand and, skipping delightedly, leads her into a universe of happy, sexy, loving fandom, where Beyoncé is queen and all are welcome at worship.
*Houston Chronicle*

With all the headlines it generated upon its release, it's hard to believe there's anything left to say about Beyoncé's Lemonade. Yet, Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley…manages to find new meaning in this cultural analysis of the already iconic record.
*Exclaim*

An insightful cultural reading of the performer combined with memoir.
*The Globe and Mail*

...expands on [Tinsley's] popular course in a vibrant blend of memoir and cultural analysis.
*Broadly*

Tinsley's tone and use of first-person perspective throughout Beyoncé in Formation invites readers to likewise contemplate their relationship to Lemonade's themes. She writes with familiarity and authority all at once. I thought I 'got' Lemonade before, but Beyoncé in Formation inspired me to dig deeper.
*Women's Review of Books*

A call for solidarity among Black feminists, this painfully beautiful read reminds us that none of us are free until we are all free.
*Bust Magazine*

A smart, eye-opening examination.
*Toronto Star*

This 'mixtape' memoir is an empowering presentation that encourages readers to think outside the box...when it comes to defining feminism.
*Philadelphia Tribune*

Part scholarly treatise and part family history, part lavish scrapbook and part justice-oriented advocacy—you've never read a book quite like this.
*The Millions*

Accessible and compulsively readable. The Beyhive will ride with [Tinsley's] breathless video analyses, but I especially love Tinsley's candid stories about her own life and loves.
*The Rumpus*

Tinsley's commitment to theorizing Black queer femme gender and sexuality opens up a space for lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer Black women that most Black feminist projects neglect to address…Tinsley demonstrates the Black feminist practice of bringing one's self into their writing without overshadowing the larger contributions of their research much like the 2018 books Thick by Tressie M. Cottom and Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper.
*Ethnic and Racial Studies*