Zook, Kristal Brent

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Kristal Brent Zook

1966(?)—

Journalist, scholar

A respected investigative journalist, scholar, and journalism professor, Dr. Kristal Brent Zook has written widely on issues of race and gender. Her writings on popular American culture, politics, education, empowerment, environmental and social-justice issues, and health and health disparities have been published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines. Zook's doctoral dissertation on black television programming led to her first book, Color by Fox, published in 1999. With her next book, Black Women's Lives, in 2006, Zook established herself among the leading writers giving voice to black feminist issues.

Earned Her Doctorate in Cultural Studies

In the mid-1960s Kristal Brent Zook was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, in an all-female household that included her mother, Beverly Guenin, her grandmother, Christine Brent, and her cousin Lisa Brent. Kristal's father, Phillip Zook, who was white, was a gardener and landscaper in the San Fernando Valley. Although her mother and grandmother at times earned below a living wage and were forced onto welfare, they encouraged young Zook to aim high. She did, earning acceptance into the University of California at Santa Barbara after high school.

As an undergraduate at the University of California (UC) at Santa Barbara, Zook studied African-American women writers and theories of race, class, and gender. Her mentor, Professor Elliott Butler-Evans, prodded her to go on to graduate school. In 1987 Zook did field work in politics and Central American history in Managua, Nicaragua, and entered the History of Consciousness Program at UC Santa Cruz.

There were few precedents for Zook's doctoral research on black television. In her introduction to Color by Fox Zook described the genesis of her dissertation: "I was a twenty-two-year-old, self-consciously light-skinned graduate student, and I too wanted to be ‘really black’ (as opposed to, as one dreadlocked professor referred to me, ‘not really black’)." She eventually came to view her early interviews with rappers and black filmmakers as "attempts to come to terms with my own ambiguous racial positionality." Zook was mentored by the sociologist and television theorist Herman Gray. The film theorist Teresa de Lauretis chaired her dissertation committee, which included activist/scholar Angela Davis.

Analyzed Black Television

In 1996 Zook was a visiting professor in cultural studies and a lecturer in communication and media studies at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. She wrote in Essence in 2002: "From the moment I arrived in Australia, it was as though the world had been turned upside down: Australia was forcing me to look at lifelong assumptions about ‘blackness’ from a new angle. Like doing a headstand in yoga, my worldview was being oxygenated, and I loved it."

During the 1990s Zook had established herself as a journalist and cultural reporter, writing regularly about television, movies, and books for the Village Voice and the LA Weekly. She set out to turn her doctoral thesis into a work of popular nonfiction.

By the late 1980s white America had adopted cable TV and videos, and blacks were watching 44 percent more network television than the rest of the country, according to Zook's research in Color by Fox. The new Fox network set out to attract this audience. By 1993 Fox had the most black-produced shows in the history of television, and by 1995 black Americans accounted for 25 percent of the network's market. Zook spent a decade interviewing television writers, executives, producers, directors, and stars. She analyzed the programs that reflected black experience and that dealt with issues of black sexuality, gender relations, social responsibility and activism, intra-racial classism and colorism, and relations between blacks and Latinos. She examined the autobiographical, improvisational, aesthetic, and dramatic attributes of programs such as In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Living Single, the Sinbad Show, and South Central. Zook concluded: "Such shows helped us to know that our fears, desires, and memories are often collective, not individual. We may have been watching alone in our homes, but black shows of the 1990s were not unlike those conversations our grandparents used to have on front porches, in segregated cities, so far away from home." Fox eventually abandoned its black audience for more mainstream programming. Color by Fox was published under the auspices of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute and received mixed reviews.

Examined the Lives of Black Women

In 1995 the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. suggested to Zook that she interview women working in Mississippi catfish and poultry plants. Zook wrote in her preface to Black Women's Lives: "I went South because, as a biracial woman who was raised by two generations of African American women in an urban environment, I needed to understand the chasm between myself and those who remained in the rural fields that my grandmother had left behind as a young girl." Over the next decade Zook made nearly three dozen trips to the South, as well as to the Northeast and Northwest. Black Women's Lives profiled ten women, including a black Vermont organic farmer whose parents were white, a biracial California filmmaker who had been adopted by a white family, a New York cosmetics executive, and the principal of America's first sugar-free school. Zook told Essence in 2006: "So many of us don't fit the mainstream stereotypes of us as victims or criminals, sex objects or comedians. The women in my book are multifaceted thinkers, planners, dreamers, healers, lovers, educators and friends."

At a Glance …

Born Kristal Brent Zook in 1966(?), in Los Angeles, CA. Education: University of California, Santa Barbara, BA, English, 1987; University of Madrid, Spain, 1986-87; University of California, Santa Cruz, PhD, History of Consciousnesses, 1994.

Career: Author, journalist, editor, public speaker, 1990-; Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine, resident scholar, 1993; University of California, Los Angeles, visiting assistant professor, African-American Studies, 1995-96; University of Nevada, Reno, visiting Hilliard Scholar, 1996; Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, visiting lecturer and fellow, 1996; editor and producer for television and radio, including National Public Radio's The Tavis Smiley Show, 2000-; Center for an Urban Future, editor-in-chief, 2002; Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York, NY, associate adjunct professor, 2002-; Essence magazine, contributing writer, 2002-; Connect magazine, editor-in-chief, 2005-.

Selected awards: University of California, Santa Barbara, W.E.B. DuBois Writing Contest, First Place Essay Winner, 1986; University of California, Santa Cruz, Friends of the UCSC Library 25th Annual Book Collection Contest, first-prize essay for Black Women Writers: A Collection of Books, 1991; Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow, 2005; Henry Luce Award for Public Service Reporting; National Association of Black Journalists Award.

Addresses: Office—Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, 2950 Broadway, MC 3801, New York, NY 10027. Web—www.kristalbrentzook.com.

Between 2000 and 2002 Zook wrote regular features on television, music, and film for the Washington Post. She moved to New York City in 2002 and in 2004 she disconnected her TV. As an investigative journalist Zook focused on stories from the black community that were ignored by mainstream media. She wrote about domestic violence, including her own experiences. In an Essence story on missing women Zook wrote: "When Black women disappear, the media silence can be deafening. While the families of the missing struggle to bring national attention to their lost loved ones, they sift through the clues and pray for a miracle." She wrote about black women soldiers who died in the Iraq war, many of whom had joined the military to pay for their college educations. In 2006 Zook was interviewed on CNN about her investigation of the alleged rape of an exotic dancer by members of the Duke University lacrosse team, which had been sensationalized in the press. The players were eventually exonerated. Zook spent five months researching the experimental testing of HIV/AIDS drugs on 76 black foster children in New York City. By the time her special report appeared in Essence in 2007, the number of children known to be affected had increased to more than 500.

As of 2007 Zook was a contributing writer for Essence and a commentator on National Public Radio's News and Notes. She taught feature writing and advised graduate students at Columbia. She also led intensive writing workshops for professionals and executives. Her speaking topics included "The Essence of Truth and Justice: Empowering Women's Lives from the 1960's to the Present," "Media Monopoly: Is a Black-Owned TV Network the Impossible Dream?" and "Playing the Game: Race, Gender, and Surviving Corporate Politics." Zook was completing a book on minority ownership of the media.

Selected writings

Books

Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Black Women's Lives: Stories of Power and Pain, Nation Books, 2006.

Periodicals

"View from the War Zone," Village Voice, May 12, 1992.

"A Manifesto of Sorts for a Black Feminist Movement," New York Times Magazine, November 12, 1995, p. 686.

"Of Love and Madness: Why Women Stay When the Perfect Mate Turns Abusive," Washington Post, February 11, 1996, p. C5.

"Love Down Under," Essence, Vol. 33, No. 3, July 2002, pp. 102-106.

"Jump at de Sun," Nation, Vol. 276, No. 6, February 17, 2003, pp. 33-38.

Working Mother, Guest Editor, Special Issue "Best Companies for Women of Color," June 2003.

"Missing Women," Baltimore Sun, December 22, 2003.

"Memories in Black and Blue," Essence, Vol. 35, No. 7, November 2004, pp. 152, 154.

"Screened Out," New York Times Magazine, January 23, 2005, pp. 16-17.

"Have You Seen Her?" Essence, Vol. 36, No. 3, June 2005, pp. 128-132.

"They Never Made it Home: Black Women Soldiers in Iraq," Essence, Vol. 36, No. 1, May 2005, pp. 262-263.

(With Patrik Henry Bass) "The New York City AIDS Experiment," Essence, Vol. 37, No. 10, February 2007, pp. 196-201.

On-line

"Turn Off the TV," AlterNet, April 22, 2004, www.alternet.org/story/18487 (April 23, 2007).

"Beyond Legal Definitions, What Makes a Family?" News & Notes, November 20, 2006, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6513392 (May 6, 2007).

"Digging at Duke," Women's Media Center, January 22, 2007, www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/012207.html (April 23, 2007).

Other

"Reconstructions of Nationalist Thought in Black Music and Culture," in Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, ed. Reebee Garafolo, South End Press, 1992.

"Ralph Farquhar's South Central and Pearl's Place to Play: Why They Failed Before Moesha Hit," in Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America, ed. Darnell M. Hunt, Oxford University Press, 2005.