Lerninhalte |
The genre of biography is often dedicated to already established people, and we will indeed begin our journey through the lives of black people with Sojourner Truth, an illiterate former slave who rose to fame for her activist speeches. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was published during her lifetime. We will then look at Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon based on the interviews with Cudjo Lewis, a survivor of the Middle Passage. While written in the early twentieth century, the manuscript had remained unpublished until 2018. Finally, we will look at Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, a book that recreates black lives from fragments and photographs found in the archives. The main issue that unites all three publications is the focus on orality, which leads to discussions of archives, traces, sources and formats of writing. Please purchase and buy the following books:
- Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives. Beautiful Experiments. Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. (W.W. Norton, 2019)
- Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon. The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ (ed. By Deborah G. Plant; Amistad, 2018)
- Sojourner Truth (1850/1884), Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Penguin Books, 1998)
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