Promotional Information

Examines how African American artists and intellectuals turn to the subject of slavery to understand and challenge the ongoing exclusion of African Americans from the founding narratives of the United States

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Peculiar Citizenships 1
1. Freedom in a Bondsmaid's Arms: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and the Persistence of African American Memory 19
2. The Milder and More Amusing Phases of Slavery: Uncle Tom's Cabin and Black Satire 51
3. A Race of Angels: (Trans)Nationalism, African American Tourism, and the Slave Forts 95
4. What Have We Done to Weigh So Little on Their Scale: Mnemonic Restitution and the Aesthetics of Racial Reparations 133
Epilogue. The President's House, Freedom, and Slavery in the Age of Obama 169
Notes 179
Bibliography 195
Index 217

About the Author

Salamishah Tillet is Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

"Sites of Slavery is a meticulously researched, persuasively argued, beautifully written, and intellectually daring study of contemporary narratives of slavery. Through her dazzling readings of fiction, drama, dance, cinema, visual art, heritage tourism, reparations legal cases, and critical race historiographies, Salamishah Tillet demonstrates how a range of African American artists, writers, and intellectuals respond to the contemporary 'crisis of citizenship' by foregrounding a 'democratic aesthetic' in their representations of slavery. This book will transform the way we think about the place of African American cultural production in relation to 'post-civil rights era' political discourse." - Valerie Smith, author of Toni Morrison: Writing the Moral Imagination.