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BestsellerE-book
Author Woodard, Vincent, 1971-2008.

Title The delectable Negro : human consumption and homoeroticism within U.S. slave culture / Vincent Woodard ; edited by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride ; foreword by E. Patrick Johnson.

Publication Info. New York : New York University Press, 2014.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Sexual cultures
Sexual cultures.
Summary "Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence. The Delectable Negro explores these connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture. Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith's slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. Woodard uses these texts to unpack how slaves struggled not only against social consumption, but also against endemic mechanisms of starvation and hunger designed to break them. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison's Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents 1 Cannibalism in Transatlantic Context 29 -- 2 Sex, Honor, and Human Consumption 59 -- 3 A Tale of Hunger Retold: Ravishment and Hunger in F. Douglass's Life and Writing 95 -- 4 Domestic Rituals of Consumption 127 -- 5 Eating Nat Turner 171 -- 6 Hungry Nigger 269.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Enslaved persons -- Southern States -- Social conditions.
Enslaved persons.
Southern States.
Social conditions.
African American men -- Southern States -- Social conditions.
African American men.
Plantation life -- Southern States -- History.
Plantation life.
History.
Starvation -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History.
Starvation -- Social aspects.
Starvation.
Cannibalism -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History.
Cannibalism.
Social aspects.
Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History.
Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects.
Consumption (Economics)
Male homosexuality -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History.
Male homosexuality -- Social aspects.
Male homosexuality.
Slavery in literature.
Slavery in literature.
African American men in literature.
African American men in literature.
American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism.
American literature -- African American authors.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Added Author Joyce, Justin A., editor.
McBride, Dwight A., editor.
Other Form: Print version: Woodard, Vincent, 1971-2008. Delectable Negro 9780814794616 (DLC) 2014002841 (OCoLC)863195393
ISBN 9781479815807 (electronic book)
1479815802 (electronic book)
9781479849260 (electronic book)
147984926X (electronic book)
9780814794616
0814794610
9780814794623
0814794629