Having It All?: Black Women and Success

by Veronica Chambers

A behind-the-scenes look into the lives of successful middle- and upper-middle class African American women, the groundbreaking HAVING IT ALL? is sure to spark discussions from cocktail parties to boardrooms.

In a single generation, black women have made extraordinary strides academically, professionally, and financially. They’ve entered the workplace at a far greater rate than white women; increased their enrollment in law schools and graduate programs by 120 percent; and many are now running top companies, or in some cases, the country. Isn’t that enough? Not necessarily. With sharp insight, award-winning journalist Veronica Chambers explores the challenges and stereotypes she and other African American women continue to endure, and answers the question most often posed to her: What does success mean for black women?

Twenty-first century black women draw their inspiration from a wide range of sources: Claire Huxtable to Audrey Hepburn, snowboarding to basketball, Gloria Steinem to bell hooks. They choose what they like. Yet they are misunderstood by mainstream America and lack an accurate portrayal in the media of their lives. HAVING IT ALL? interweaves the thoughts and reflections of more than fifty women who occupy this territory. The voices range from Thelma Golden, chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, to a Silicon Valley executive, to medical and legal professionals, and stay-at-home “mocha moms.”

Successful black women today want it all: marriage, motherhood, engaging work, and prosperity. The difference is that they come to the table with the strength, courage and wisdom of black women ancestors who-did-it-all, even when they didn’t-have-it-all. What has gone so undocumented by the media is that modern black women are coming up with creative, satisfying answers to the juggling act that all women face.

Veronica Chambers chronicles this topic for the first time in her absorbing, riveting and groundbreaking book HAVING IT ALL?

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 21, 2003

About the author

Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir, Mama’s Girl, which has been course adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges throughout the country. The New Yorker called Mama’s Girl “a troubling testament to grit and mother love… one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years.” Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, Ms. Chambers' work often reflects her Afro-Latina heritage.

Her most recent non-fiction book was Kickboxing Geishas: How Japanese Women are Changing their Nation. Her other non-fiction books include The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl’s Guide to Love, Life, and Foolish Bravery. She has also written more than a dozen books for children, most recently Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa and the body confidence Y/A novel, Plus. Her teen series, Amigas, is a collaboration between Chambers, producer Jane Startz, and Jennifer Lopez.

Veronica spent two seasons as an executive story editor for CW’s hit series Girlfriends, and earned a BET Comedy Award for her script work on that series. She has also written and developed projects for Fox and the N.

Veronica has contributed to several anthologies, including the best-selling Bitch in the House, edited by Cathi Hanuaer, and Mommy Wars, edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner.

A graduate of Simon’s Rock College at Bard, she and her husband have endowed three scholarships at the college in the fields of music and literature. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Hodder fellowship for emerging novelists at Princeton University and a National Endowment for the Arts fiction award. She speaks, reads and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She lives with her husband and daughter in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Reviews

[CKE387 · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself." - Toni Morrison
This book deals with the changing image of Black women in society from cultural images of Aunt Jemima to uber-mogul Oprah Winfrey. Black women have made extraordinary strides academically, professionally and financially, but still remain largley a mystery to mainstream America. "You're not like other black girls." is an often-heared double-edged compliment implying that you're an anomaly, an exception/exotic & rare. Invisibility and isolation, not race and class were the double burdens that haunted their daily life. Claire Huxtable, esq. broke the mold; she wasn't a figment of a television writer's imagination, and she wasn't the 'Only One.' "Claire Huxtable gave Wonder Woman a bad name/ Yet she wasn't a mythic character." Black women are the daughters of the Civil Rights and Women's Movements. But often tested by each group for their loyalty - are you a woman first or Black???

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a chapter on dating, she writes very honestly about what she loves about black men, and what she loves about her husband, who is white. When a black woman asks me "what it's like to be married to a white guy," I ask, "have you read _Having It All_?" When the answer is yes, I ask her to re-read this part. You can love black men, and yourself, and also love your husband no matter what race he is. So thank you, Veronica Chambers, for writing about this!

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read that I can easily relate to as a Black woman. Even though this book is dated back in 2003, the examples used still ring true. The stories revealed show how Black women handle success while managing the people around them.

[Kametra Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking into the lives of successful black women... From their perspective, allowing their voices to be heard and their story told. Feels like it's your story too.

[Douglas Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chambers, formerly the cultural writer at Newsweek, wonderfully synthesizes the experiences of more than 50 contemporary, middle-class black women. Despite cultivating a high degree of self-awareness and spirituality, as well as attaining professional success, many of the interviewees come off as one-dimensional--none of them really has it all, and, of course, each defines "all" individually. While she acknowledges that some so-called high-class problems are comparatively insignificant ("try bemoaning the fact you were treated poorly by a snobby salesperson at [Bergdorf Goodman] to your grandmother, the daughter of a slave"), Chambers keenly characterizes these women as having "cultural schizophrenia," torn between contradictory roles. They are "a creation of dreams, ideology, and opportunities created by both the Civil Rights Movement and the modern women's rights movement," and their lives have "been a long series of negotiations between real and imagined obstacles, between low expectations, stereotypes and limited resources." Extremely well written and at times revelatory, this narrative isn't out to draw hard conclusions. Instead, it's a cogent, eyeopening exploration.

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