Reading pleasures : everyday Black living in early America / Tara A. Bynum.

Author
Bynum, Tara [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2023]
  • ©2023
Description
x, 161 pages ; 24 cm.

Details

Subject(s)
Library of Congress genre(s)
Series
Summary note
"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."-- Back cover.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
  • Introduction: The matter of black living
  • 1. Phillis Wheatley's Pleasures
  • 2. James Albert Ukawsaw Gronnioswa's Joyful Conversion
  • 3. Desiring John Marrant
  • 4. David Walker's Good News Coda; Or, Reading Pleasures: looking for arbour/obour/orbour.
ISBN
  • 9780252044731 ((cloth ; : alk.))
  • 0252044738 ((cloth ; : alk.))
  • 9780252086830 ((paper ; : alk.))
  • 025208683X ((paper ; : alk.))
OCLC
1350640183
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