Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts
eBook - ePub

Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts

  1. 176 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts

About this book

An engaging homage to African American resilience and resourcefulness in US literature and culture.

Through a cultural study of writings about slavery in the United States, Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts uncovers a mode of behavior adopted by African Americans for relief from the brutality of black bondage. Roland Leander Williams grants that African Americans have been beaten, but he guarantees that they have not been broken. While he acknowledges that they have been demeaned, he assures that they have not been diminished. Williams confesses that African Americans have been done harm, but he confirms that they have not become disheartened. Close readings of classic slave narratives, along with some neo-slave narratives-including The Conjure Woman (1899), Kindred (1979), Dessa Rose (1986), and The Good Lord Bird (2013)-furnish proof that African Americans have preserved their dignity and elevated their status through ingenious applications of improvisation. Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts establishes as well that a dim view of African Americans, propagated by black bondage, bears a resemblance to sexual discrimination, which prompts female targets of its gaze to practice dissembling.

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Yes, you can access Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts by Roland Leander Williams in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literatur & Nordamerikanische Literaturkritik. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Prologue: On the Sly
  7. Birth of Cool
  8. Standards and Practices
  9. Two of Kind
  10. Game of Charades
  11. Old Black Magic
  12. Lost in Translation
  13. Learning the Ropes
  14. Blind Man’s Bluff
  15. Dress for Success
  16. Postscript: On One’s Game
  17. Works Cited
  18. Index
  19. Back Cover