#post-slavery

[yearningforunity]

Street View, Kingston – James Valentine & Sons, 1891

Despite the ban on slavery, Jamaica was still ruled by upper-class whites well into the 20th century, until the campaigners Marcus Garvey and Alexander Bustamente helped usher in the independence movement. Jamaica finally became independent of the UK in 1962.

[sock-to-the-third]

The Sweetness of Water [informal]

By Nathan Harris

I completely forgot to write this up.

Big points:

1. Writing was superb. A chill pacing that let the scenery unfold in an old timey way.

2. Multiple conflicts that kept me at the edge of my seat by the end.

3. Such unique characters! I’ve especially the men. They show this vulnerability, even Landry has his moments too.

4. Intense. Omfg. I knew it would be but I didn’t know. At times, it was very challenging to read emotionally.

5. I like the ending. It isn’t as bitter as I thought it’d be. It strikes this happy medium between hope and implying that everyone has a long way to go.

RIP Landry and George.

Also I originally picked up the book because of how it came up in a search for “gay” at the library. While there is an m/m relationship, it’s part of the drama. Not bad, it’s just not the point of the book. Landry and Prentiss’s conflicts have a little more weight, while Caleb does have scenes with a partner, it’s more like it’s… well his partner murders someone in a not-cool way so the queerness is more an aspect.

I’d read this more for Prentiss and Landry’s storyline, it’s more interesting even if Caleb’s plays an important part.

[blackyouthproject]

'Seeking for the Lost' and the project of finding each other as a misplaced people

‘Seeking for the Lost’ and the project of finding each other as a misplaced people

by Donnie Moreland 

“We hummed a celebration for living. For fighting. For refusing to die. For enduring when giving up would be easier. For believing, against all odds, that we’d get home someday.” 

—The Coming; Daniel Black

  “It’s nothing like losing one’s keys. It’s not as if he has been misplaced. It’s not as simple as retracing one’s steps. He has not been lost.” 

—The Loss of All Lost…

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[blackyouthproject]

Looking to the Blues as record of Black folks' loss and longing

Looking to the Blues as record of Black folks’ loss and longing

by Donnie Moreland 

This essay mentions domestic violence. 

August Wilsononce noted, “The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in.” I believe this to be true, in so far as the Blues may no longer be misappropriated and mythologized by folks who’d rather use it as…

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[readincolour]

#BookReview: SEEDS OF DECEPTION by Arlene Walker

Synopsis: A clash between Cherokee Indians and their former African slaves comes to a head in the tribal town of Feather Falls. On the same day Sput Louie McClendon is evicted by reviled town tycoon Goliah Lynch, her husband mysteriously vanishes. Has he fallen prey to bushwhackers or timber thieves? Or is Lynch behind his disappearance? Alone and desperate, Sput Louie turns to town elder for help, but are his intentions pure? As Sput Louie’s frantic search for her husband intensifies, she stumbles onto a dark twisted family secret – one that could not only have devastating implications for her, but the entire town of Feather Falls. Review: Iyanla Vanzant always talks about people "doing the work." Nothing comes to anyone easily, you must prepare so when an opportunity presents itself, you're ready to seize your moment. Arlene Walker has done her work and has been preparing for this moment. Seeds of Deception is well researched historical fiction about Africans formerly enslaved by Native American tribes and their quest to be recognized as tribal members. Recognition of such would allow them to receive land, stipends, etc. from the U.S. government, especially important in the post-Civil War era. It should be noted that descendants of formerly enslaved Africans are still fighting for tribal recognition. Walker's characters are well developed and multidimensional. Their story lines are intriguing, and she's really out to teach her readers aspects of history they never knew about or provide a deeper understanding of that which you thought you knew. Her writing style is reminiscent of J. California Cooper, specifically The Wake of the Wind, and Leonard Pitts, Jr. (Freeman). Fans of either author will greatly enjoy Seeds of Deception. I've followed Arlene on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for quite awhile, so I've been aware that she was working on a book, but I didn't know it would be this book and that it would be so good. Honestly, I'm so envious of everyone who hasn't read her debut novel yet. I wish I could go back and meet her characters all over again. I haven't stopped thinking about their stories yet. Seeds of Deception is easily one of my favorite reads this year. Seeds of Deception by Arlene L. Walker My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews June 19, 2019 at 11:00AM from ReadInColour.com http://bit.ly/2KsrJJA

[blackyouthproject]

Reflecting on GayL Jones’ ‘CoRregidora’ and its excavation of transgenerational traumas on the body

Reflecting on GayL Jones’ ‘CoRregidora’ and its excavation of transgenerational traumas on the body

This essay contains discussions of reproductive and sexual violences, including r/pe and incestual abuse, and spoilers for GayL Jones’ CoRregidora

by Donnie Moreland

I feel that there has hardly been a literary excavation of post-slavery racial and gendered performance more critical than GayL Jones’ 1975 novel, CoRregidora. I believe that despite the depictions of historical and domestically…

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[readincolour]

#BookReview: THE KITCHEN HOUSE by Kathleen Grissom

This review previously appeared on the site in December 2010. In anticipation of the release of its sequel, Glory Over Everything, I'm re-posting it. I think sometimes we, or at least I, forget that in addition to slaves toiling in America's early years, there were also indentured servants.  The Kitchen House is the story of Lavinia, an Irish servant, brought to America to work off the debt her family incurred in exchange for their voyage.  Traumatized by the death of her parents on the trip over, and the separation from her brother, Lavinia arrives at the Pyke plantation as a young child. Lavinia is immediately thrown into the family of slaves that work the plantation and becomes especially close to Belle.  Belle's birth mother is long deceased, but Mama Mae and Papa George head her extended family.  Having been promised freedom, Belle continues to bide her time until her manumission papers are signed and freedom becomes a reality.  As Lavinia moves toward the end of her servitude, it becomes clear that she's hesitant to leave the safety of the only family she's known and move into a world where the color of her skins affords her the freedom her family will never know. What did you like about this book? Told from the points of view of both Lavinia and Belle, The Kitchen House is an absolutely fascinating read.  It's interesting to watch Lavinia grow into a young woman and see how she repeats the cycle of those that have come before her.  The whole time I was reading it, I wondered if she had a light bulb moment where she realized that she had become what she pitied most. As a first time author, Kathleen Grissom hit it out of the ballpark. What didn't you like about this book?  I really wanted Lavinia to end up with one character and I kept holding out hope that eventually it might work out that way but, unfortunately, it didn't. What could the author do to improve this book? Not a thing

368 p. Published February 2010 Amazon | B & N | Book Depository | IndieBound March 30, 2016 at 11:00AM from ReadInColour.com http://ift.tt/1RJsqZJ

[ethicopoliticolit]

Douglass's scenes of forcible sex and other violent subjections introduce the ongoing processes of subjectification during slavery and into post-slavery to which all postmodern subjects are made subject. These are subjections, I argue, that are most readable and locatable still through the horrors enacted on the black body after slavery and the official periods of emancipation and through further colonialism, imperialism, and the relative freedoms of segregation, desegregation, and independence, whether that body is in the Caribbean, the Americas, England, or post-independence Africa. That is, while all modern subjects are post-slavery subjects fully constituted by the discursive codes of slavery and post-slavery, post-slavery subjectivity is largely borne by and readable on the (New World) *black* subject. Thinking about monstrous intimacies post-slavery means examining those subjectivities constituted from trans-atlantic slavery onward and connected, then as now, by the everyday mundane horrors that aren't acknowledged to be horrors. It means articulating a diasporic study that is attentive to but not dependent upon nations and nationalisms and that is linked, in different forms during slavery and into the present freedoms, by monstrous intimacies, defined as a set of known and unknown performances and inhabited horrors, desires and positions produced, reproduced, circulated, and transmitted, that are breathed in like air and often unacknowledged to be monstrous.

Christina Sharpe, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 3.