Title The delectable Negro : human consumption and homoeroticism within U.S. slave culture / Vincent Woodard ; edited by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride ; foreword by E. Patrick Johnson

Published New York : New York University Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource Series Sexual cultures Sexual cultures. Contents 1 Cannibalism in Transatlantic Context 29 -- 2 Sex, Honor, and Human Consumption 59 -- 3 A Tale of Hunger Retold: Ravishment and Hunger in F. Douglass's Life and Writing 95 -- 4 Domestic Rituals of Consumption 127 -- 5 Eating Nat Turner 171 -- 6 The Hungry Nigger 269 Summary "Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence. The Delectable Negro explores these connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture. Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith's slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. Woodard uses these texts to unpack how slaves struggled not only against social consumption, but also against endemic mechanisms of starvation and hunger designed to break them. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison's Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Enslaved persons -- Southern States -- Social conditions African American men -- Southern States -- Social conditions Plantation life -- Southern States -- History Starvation -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History Cannibalism -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History Male homosexuality -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History Slavery in literature. African American men in literature. American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism HISTORY -- Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies) SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Gay Studies. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Ethnic Studies -- African American Studies. African American men in literature African American men -- Social conditions American literature -- African American authors Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects Male homosexuality -- Social aspects Plantation life Slavery in literature Enslaved persons -- Social conditions Starvation -- Social aspects Afroamerikanismus Soziale Situation Homosexualität Kannibalismus Sklaverei Motiv Literatur African American literature. Slaves -- Southern States -- Social conditions. Male homosexuality -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History. Slavery in literature. Southern States USA Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book Author Joyce, Justin A., editor. McBride, Dwight A., editor. ISBN 9781479815807 1479815802 9781479849260 147984926X

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