Reading Pleasures

Everyday Black Living in Early America

Tara A. Bynum (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

184 Seiten

2023
University of Illinois Press (Verlag)
978-0-252-08683-0 (ISBN)

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In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure. Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter. A daring assertion of Black people’s humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends.

Tara A. Bynum is an assistant professor of English and African American studies at the University of Iowa.

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Matter of Black Living

Phillis Wheatley’s Pleasures
James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s Joyful Conversion
Desiring John Marrant
David Walker’s Good News

Coda; Or, Reading Pleasures: Looking for Arbour/Obour/Orbour Notes

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	16.01.2023
Reihe/Serie	New Black Studies Series
Verlagsort	Baltimore
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	200 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-252-08683-X / 025208683X
ISBN-13	978-0-252-08683-0 / 9780252086830
Zustand	Neuware