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Cinnamon Williams, one of the newest faculty members in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, is already making waves. Despite being in her second semester as an assistant professor, she has already gained attention for her debut book, “Slave of a Slave No More.”

The volume is a culmination of all her work as a Black feminist theorist. In each chapter, Williams explores a pillar of Black domestic life in the mid-to late-20^th century and explains how Black feminists began to question and challenge the structure of their intimate lives during this time period.

“By the ‘structure,’ I mean who cooks, who cleans, who takes care of the kids, and why that kind of labor is organized in a certain way,” Williams explained. “For example, motherhood and love are central concerns of two of the chapters.”

The ultimate goal of “Slave of a Slave No More” is to uncover what gender means in Black life, while challenging the notion that Black feminists of the time focused more on external pressures on the Black community, like racism, homophobia, and capitalism, rather than internal pressures like sexism. The book also aims to advance a different reading process for analyzing early Black feminist sources.

“By ‘reading dissent’ and paying attention to moments where Black feminists expressed frustration about or dissatisfaction with domestic life, I show that interpreting Black women’s labor in the home only through the lenses of care or love is limiting and a bit romantic,” Williams said.

Although much of the book focuses on the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Williams hopes that readers draw parallels to contemporary times, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were incredible demands on Black women to sustain the healthcare and service industries during lockdown, the same kinds of labor Williams describes in the book.

“I think it’s imperative for people to make connections between the two periods,” Williams said, “and realize that there has never been a moment in U.S. history when Black women haven’t been expected to labor in this way.”

Williams hopes that readers gain a deeper appreciation for the work performed by the pioneering Black feminists in the mid-to late-20th century, not just for the changes they made on their own lives or the lives of other Black women, but also for their impacts on the popular movements of the time at large, like the feminist, queer, and anti-capitalist movements. She hopes that her book helps preserve their often-overlooked contributions and their lasting legacies.

Williams began “Slave of a Slave No More” during the beginning of the pandemic and worked on it throughout the stages of lockdowns and reopening, a process she described as “incredibly isolating and sometimes feeling impossible.” She credits her amazing mentors and thought partners for getting her through those challenging times, and her hard work would pay off as 2023 started to wrap up.

Her monograph caught the attention of the National Women’s Studies Association, a group committed to “the dissemination of knowledge about women and gender,” according to the group’s mission statement. As a result, she was nominated for the 2023 First Book Prize, and was eventually chosen as one of two winners.

“I was terribly excited! To me, earning the prize signals that the work resonates with other people and that it has a community of potential readers who will find value in it,” she said.

With the experience and success of her first book under her belt, she already has plans to write a follow-up book about sexual experimentation among radical feminists in the 1970’s and is currently working on two shorter works about Black lesbian politics and labor refusal in Black women’s contemporary R&B music.