Reading Pleasures
eBook - ePub

Reading Pleasures

Everyday Black Living in Early America

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

Reading Pleasures

Everyday Black Living in Early America

About this book

In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure. Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker's pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter.

A daring assertion of Black people's humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends.

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Yes, you can access Reading Pleasures by Tara A. Bynum in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & African American History. 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. Introduction: The Matter of Black Living
  7. 1. Phillis Wheatley’s Pleasures
  8. 2. James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s Joyful Conversion
  9. 3. Desiring John Marrant
  10. 4. David Walker’s Good News
  11. Coda; Or, Reading Pleasures: Looking for Arbour/Obour/Orbour
  12. Notes
  13. Index
  14. Back Cover