Black Is the Body is a collection of 12 autobiographical essays by American author Emily Bernard, reflecting her experiences as an African American woman in the Southern U.S.

Emily Bernard is an American scholar, New York Times award-winning essayist, and Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Bernard grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and earned her Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale University.

In 1994, Bernard was stabbed in the stomach by an unknown attacker in a coffee house in New Haven, Connecticut.

The traumatic event prompted a series of essays dealing with the body, gender, race, and violence that Bernard started writing in 2001.

Black is the Body is both a memoir and a collection of essays about what it means to be an African American woman in the American South.

The book was awarded the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose in 2019.