Duke University Press Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and Black Subjectivity New Americanists

Author	Sharon Patricia Holland
Format	Trade paperback
ISBN	9780822324997
Publisher	Duke University Press
Manufacturer	Duke University Press

"Raising the Dead" is a thought-provoking book that explores the relationship between death and subjectivity in twentieth-century American literature and culture. The author, Sharon Patricia Holland, argues that death is intimately connected to black subjectivity and that understanding this connection can provide insight into the collision of bodies, discourses, and communities. Through her analysis of various works, including "Menace II Society," "Beloved," and "A Visitation of Spirits," Holland gives voice to marginalized groups and challenges traditional methods of literary investigation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in fields such as American culture, African-American literature, literary theory, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.

Raising the Dead is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary exploration of death’s relation to subjectivity in twentieth-century American literature and culture. Sharon Patricia Holland contends that black subjectivity in particular is connected intimately to death. For Holland, travelling through ??the space of death? gives us, as cultural readers, a nuanced and appropriate metaphor for understanding what is at stake when bodies,
discourses, and communities collide.
Holland argues that the presence of blacks, Native Americans, women, queers, and other ??minorities? in society is, like death, ??almost unspeakable.? She gives voice to?"or raises?"the dead through her examination of works such as the movie Menace II Society, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, and the work of the all-white, male, feminist hip-hop band Consolidated. In challenging established methods of literary investigation by putting often-disparate voices in dialogue with each other, Holland forges connections among African-American literature and culture, queer and feminist theory.
Raising the Dead will be of interest to students and scholars of American culture, African-American literature, literary theory, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.