Reading Pleasures
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€23.99
250th anniversary
A01=Tara A. Bynum
affect
African American literature
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
American literature
Author_Tara A. Bynum
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Black body
Black joy
Black Lives Matter
Boston
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DS
Category=HBTB
Category=JBSL1
Category=JFSL3
Category=NHTB
Charleston
close reading
colonial America
COP=United States
correspondence
David Walker
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Early America
England
enslaved
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
faith
feeling
freedom
history of emotion
human action
interior life
interiority
James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
John Marrant
joy
Language_English
letters
literacy
making meaning
Methodist
ministers
narrative
Nova Scotia
PA=Available
personal life
Phillis Wheatley
pleasure
poetry
Price_€20 to €50
Protestant
PS=Active
racial
racism
reading
reading practice
religion
Revolutionary War
Sestercentennial
slavery
softlaunch
South Carolina
St. Augustine
white gaze
writing community
Product details
- ISBN 9780252086830
- Weight: 313g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Jan 2023
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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.
Tara A. Bynum is an assistant professor of English and African American studies at the University of Iowa.
