Eating the Black body
Subtitle: miscegenation as sexual consumption in African-American literature and culture
By: Carlyle Van Thompson.
Series: African-American literature and culture,; v. 10
Publisher: Peter Lang
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism; African Americans -- Intellectual life; Sexual abuse victims -- United States; African Americans -- Crimes against; African Americans in literature; Miscegenation in literature; Body, Human in literature; Violence in literature; Race in literature; Sex in literature
Description: "In this exploration of racial subjugation and its aftermath, Carlyle Van Thompson illumines the racialized sexual desire that reduces Black people to commodities for consumption. Eating the Black Body examines the often-sadistic forms of sexual violence during the period of slavery and its aftermath. By looking at one poem and three novels - Richard Wright's Between the World and Me, John Oliver Killens' Youngblood, Gayl Jones' Corregidora, and Octavia Butler's Kindred - that examine slavery and the Jim Crow period, Thompson investigates a wide variety of Black bodies as sites of miscegenation and sexual desire. Thompson also examines a horrific case of White male police brutality in New York City in which a Black man was sodomized.

Bold and persuasively argued, Eating the Black Body will engage readers in a broad range of literary, historical, and cultural studies."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Speaking desire and consumption of the Black body in Richard Wright's Between the world and me; title: Miscegenation as sexual consumption : the enduring legacy of white supremacist violence in John Oliver Killens' Youngblood; title: Miscegenation, monstrous memories, and misogyny as sexual consumption in Gayl Jones' Corregidora; title: Moving past the present : racialized sexual violence and miscegenous consumption in Octavia Butler's Kindred; title: White police penetrating, probing, and playing in the Black man's ass : the sadistic sodomizing of Abner Louima.