Maroons and the Marooned

Runaways and Castaways in the Americas

Richard Bodek, Joseph Kelly, Richard Bodek, Joseph Kelly

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781496827197
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496827210
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Contributions by Richard Bodek, Claire P. Curtis, Joseph Kelly, Simon Lewis, Steve Mentz, J. Brent Morris, Peter Sands, Edward Shore, and James O'Neil Spady Commonly, the word maroon refers to someone cast away on an island. One becomes marooned, usually, through a storm at sea or by a captain as a method of punishment. But the term originally denoted escaped slaves. Though being marooned came to be associated mostly with white European castaways, the etymology invites comparison between true maroons (escaped slaves establishing new lives in the wilderness) and people who were marooned (through maritime disaster). This volume brings together literary scholars with historians, encompassing both literal maroons such as in Brazil and South Carolina as well as metaphoric scenarios in time-travel novels and postapocalyptic narratives. Included are examples from The Tempest; Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; and Octavia Butler's Kindred. Both runaways and castaways formed new societies in the wilderness. But true maroons, escaped slaves, were not cast away; they chose to fly towards the uncertainties of the wild in pursuit of freedom. In effect, this volume gives these maroons proper credit, at the very heart of American history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: “Mingled Fear and Ferocity”: A Glimpse into the Maroon Communities of the Great Dismal Swamp
• Chapter Two: Belonging and Alienation: Gullah Jack and Some Maroon Dimensions of the “Denmark Vesey Conspiracy”
• Chapter Three: “We Will Never Surrender!”: Quilombos, Their Descendants, and the Struggle for Land and Rights in Brazil’s Ribeira
• Chapter Four: The Bermuda Assemblage: Toward a Posthuman Globalization
• Chapter Five: Bookends of History: Maroonage in The Female American and Die Wand
• Chapter Six: Castaways, Re-Captive Slaves, and Resistance: Testing the Boundaries of Freedom in the Work of Yvette Christiansë
• Chapter Seven: The Opacity of Home—Being Marooned at the End of the World
• Chapter Eight: “Lest Darkness Fall”: Castaways in Time and Space in Popular Turn-of-the-Century Fiction
• Chapter Nine: Maroons and the American Epic
• List of Contributors