Memories of Slavery

Museums, Monuments, Novels

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20040407
AutoresChristopher Lloyd (0000-0003-1774-2441, autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Páginas19-51
Data de publicação2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoRooting Memory, Rooting Place (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9781137499882_2
OpenAlexW2506221510
ISBN9781137499882
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas25

In an interview in 1989, Toni Morrison clearly articulated the relationship between the memorialization of slavery and her fiction, particularly the novel Beloved (1987). There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves; nothing that reminds us of the ones who made the journey and of those who did not make it. There is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby. There's no 300-foot tower. There's no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence, or better still, on the banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place doesn't exist (that I know of), the book had to. But I didn't know that before or while I wrote it. I can see now what I was doing on the last page. I was finishing the story, transfiguring and disseminating the haunting with which the book begins. Yes, I was doing that; but I was also doing something more. I think I was pleading for that wall or that bench or that tower or that tree when I wrote the final words.1 KeywordsCollective MemoryRegional IdentityLiterary TextBare BreastOriginal EmphasisThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Art · Art history · Dozen · Ground zero · Memorialization · Nothing · Pleading · Political science · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies