TheNew York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author ofThe Love Songs of W.E.B. Du BoisandThe Age of Phillismakes 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.

Honore 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, Kimberl 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.

InMisbehaving at the Crossroads, Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black womens 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 womens 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 Crossroadsillustrates the life of one extraordinary Black womanand her extraordinary foremothers.

Honoree Fanonne Jeffersis a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of the acclaimedNew York Timesbestseller and Oprah’s Book Club Pick,The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois,which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award, and five poetry collections, including the NAACP Image Award-winningThe Age of Phillis, also nominated for the National Book Award. She teaches at the University of Oklahoma, where she holds the Paul and Carol Daube Sutton Chair in English.

• Publisher: Harper
  
• Publish Date: June 24, 2025
  
• Pages: 336
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Hardback
  
• EAN/UPC: 9780063246638
  
• Dimensions: 9.0 X 6.0 X 1.0 inches | 16.0 oz
  
• BISAC Categories: Politics, Society & Current Affairs, History, Politics, Society & Current Affairs