Scarring the Black Body: Race and Representation in African American LiteratureScarring and the act of scarring are recurrent images in African American literature. In Scarring the Black Body, Carol E. Henderson analyzes the cultural and historical implications of scarring in a number of African American texts that feature the trope of the scar, including works by Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. The first part of Scarring the Black Body, "The Call," traces the process by which African bodies were Americanized through the practice of branding. Henderson incorporates various materials -- from advertisements for the return of runaways to slave narratives -- to examine the cultural practice of "writing" the body. She also considers way in which writers and social activists, including Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, developed a "call" centered on the body's scars to demand that people of African descent be given equal rights and protection under the law. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Call | 9 |
Bodily Inscriptions | 19 |
The Ancestors Speak on the Slave | 35 |
The Response | 59 |
Bodies Scars and Ritual | 81 |
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Common terms and phrases
ability African Ameri African American body African American Literature African American writers Afro-American American Literature Ann Petry argue Baby becomes Beloved's Bigger black body black male black women bodily castration characters chattel bondage context critical cultural Denver Dessa Rose Dessa's body discourse disfigurement embodied experiences female flesh Frederick Douglass fugitive slave Harriet Harriet Jacobs healing Hedges ican identity imagination individuals Jacobs John Edgar Wideman language literal literary lives Lutie Lutie's lynching master Min’s narrative Negro Nehemiah Nellie Y novel one’s pain Paul D Paul D's Petry Petry's physical political psyche Race racial relationship rhetorical Richard Wright ritual Saul scars Sethe sexual shadows silence slave body slave narrative slaveowners slavery social Sojourner Truth space speak spirit story street symbolic tion Toni Morrison tribal markings underscores urban violence voice whip Williams Williams's woman wounded body Wright writing York