First published 2010
Christina Sharpe examines how slavery's sexual violence continues to shape both Black and white identity in contemporary America. She connects Frederick Douglass's account of his aunt's beating to modern memoirs like Essie Mae Washington-Williams's story as Strom Thurmond's daughter. Sharpe analyzes Gayl Jones's novel Corregidora alongside actual journals from a slaveholding South Carolina senator who publicly opposed interracial relationships while privately engaging in them. She explores Bessie Head's novel Maru through the lens of Saartje Baartman's exploitation as the "Hottentot Venus" in nineteenth-century Europe. Sharpe also examines Isaac Julien's film The Attendant and concludes with Kara Walker's controversial silhouette artwork. Through these literary and visual works, she reveals how intimate violence from slavery creates ongoing patterns of subjection and resistance that define modern racial experience.
Genres: american-fiction, african-american, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, literary-fiction
Setting: America, South Carolina
Period: 19th-century, Contemporary
272 pages · Kindle Edition · Duke University Press Books
Content warnings: racism, sexual-assault, slavery