Promotional Information

Through a series of literary and cultural readings, argues that African-Americans have a special relation to death arising from their death-like social marginality.

Table of Contents

Acknoweldgments ix
Introduction: Raising the Dead 1
1 Death and the Nations Subjects 13
2 Bakulu Discourse: Bodies Made "Flesh" in Toni Morrison's Beloved 41
3 Telling the Story of Genocide in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead 68
4 (Pro)Creating Imaginative Spaces and Other Queer Acts 103
5 "From this Moment Forth, We Are Black Lesbians": Querying Feminism and Killing the Self in Consolidated's Business of Punishment 124
6 Critical Conversations at the Boundary between Life and Death 149
Epilogue 175
Notes 183
Selected Bibliography 209
Index 227

About the Author

Sharon Patricia Holland is Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University.

Reviews

"Raising the Dead is a tour de force filled with provocative, original, and imaginative observations and insights. Sharon Holland draws on a dazzling range of influences and interprets an impressive array of diverse cultural forms as she asks and answers crucial questions about ancestry, origins, and heritage in African American and Native American life and culture."--George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego "A work of theoretical power and brilliant interpretive prowess."--[PERMISSION PENDING] [edited RR, PP] Wahneema Lubiano, Duke University "A thorough, challenging, and compelling investigation of the themes of subjectivity, death, and their interrelation in twentieth-century American literature and culture."--Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside " ... a vigorous and innovative book ..."--Feminist Theory, 2(1) 2001