Abstract:
A study of the experience and aesthetics of black diasporic belonging as they emerge in queerness, tension, elusiveness, desire, and disavowal. Chapters on the letters and other personal writings by C.L.R. James; George Lamming and James Baldwin at the 1956 Congress of Negro Artists and Writers in Paris; Andrew Salkey's proto-queer Caribbean novel Escape to an Autumn Pavement; and the trope of spirit possession in Nathaniel Mackey's writing and Burning Spear's reggae. Territories of the Soul demonstrates diasporic subjects making geographical claims in ways that confound more familiar nationalist and sexually normative processes of emplacement.
Honorable Mention, William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association.
Publication date:
September 11, 2015
Publication type:
Monograph