Full Description
Offers a new framework for reading American literatures that critically links African American and Latinx traditions and struggles for liberation.
Animating Black and Brown Liberation introduces a vital new tool for reading American literatures. Rooted in both ancient Egyptian ideas about life and cutting-edge theories of animacy, or levels of aliveness, this tool-ankhing-enables Michael Datcher to examine the ways African American and Latinx literatures respond to and ultimately work to resist hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and state-sponsored oppression. Weaving together close readings and politically informed philosophical reflection, Datcher considers the work of writer-activists Toni Cade Bambara, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, June Jordan, Salvador Plascencia, and Ishmael Reed, in light of theoretical interventions by Jane Bennett, Mel Y. Chen, Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault, Paulo Freire, and Erica R. Edwards. How, he asks, can cultural production positively influence Black and Brown material conditions and mobilize collective action "off the page"? How can art-based counterpublics provide a foundation for Black and Brown community organizing? What emerges from Datcher's innovative analysis is a frank assessment of the links between embodied experiences of racialization, as well as a distinctive vision of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature as a repository of emancipatory strategies with real-world applications.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Animacy Matters
1. A Matter of Body and Soul in The People of Paper and Mumbo Jumbo
2. Heroes and Hieroglyphics of the Flesh in The Salt Eaters and Heroes and Saints
3. Animating Anthologies and Firing the Canon in This Bridge Called My Back and June Jordan's Poetry for the People
4. Wanda Coleman and Kamau Daáood Sing the Blues for the Black Body
Coda: The World Stage Performance Gallery Moves
Notes
Bibliography
Index
