Race Treatment Research Articles

Psychological Disposition in the Select Novels of Zadie Smith

Psychology and Philosophy are intertwined. Psychology deals with belief and feelings, which cannot be separated. Considering psychology, many writers adapted the idea of Sigmund Freud who explained about conscious and unconscious mind. The combination of Id, ego and super ego were accepted and this was blended in literature to describe various characters in their writings. Female and male writers tried to bring out various aspects of mind, emotions and feelings in their works. They tried to analyze the characters in depth and bring out the psychological aspects, which affects them. Various female writers in British Literature such as George Eliot, Agatha Christie, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte were all brought out in their works the inner struggle and turmoil of their characters especially female characters. Zadie Smith, a contemporary writer, born to a Jamaican mother and an English father, has joined the list. She is a novelist and an essayist. Her debut novel ‘White Teeth’ won James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Betty Trask Award. She writes about the social controversies and her treatment of race and culture is well known. Zadie satirically shows the psychological struggle, suppression and oppression of the characters and multicultural aspects. She even depicts the inner turmoil of each character in her work. In all her novels, the reader can find many themes especially, cultural discrepancies, which has been rooted in their blood with an attitude, which is blended in their society.

Psychedelics, embodiment, and intersubjectivity

AbstractBackground and aimsResearch into the social aspects of set and setting have demonstrated that race is a significant factor in psychedelic experiences for racially marginalized populations. Yet, many studies of psychedelic-induced experiences continue to proceed without collecting data on or considering the influence of race or other social categories. These approaches abstract subjectivity from its embodied and historical conditions, isolating consciousness in ways that do not accord with lived experience.MethodsThis article draws on critical phenomenology, anthropology, and treatments of race in the field of psychedelic studies to outline how social categories mediate subjective experience in historically specific ways through the framework of embodiment.ResultsI argue that consciousness is fundamentally intersubjective, including during psychedelic-induced experiences. Intersubjectivity is an existential condition that makes possible meaning, communication, and socialization, processes which rely on and are perpetually (re)enacted through social categories. Therefore, studies of psychedelic-induced experiences must account for the foundational role that social categories play in constituting such embodied experiences and their effects.ConclusionsThis approach makes embodied differences matter to the study of psychedelic-induced experiences, opening new avenues of inquiry that foreground identity, power, and context in both clinical and naturalistic research.

Sylvia Wynter in the Arctic: early modern expeditionary narratives and the construction of ‘Man’

This article locates Martin Frobisher’s voyages to the North American Arctic in 1576, 1577 and 1578 in relation to the thought of Jamaican critic and theorist Sylvia Wynter. For Wynter, the post-Columbian settlement and colonisation of the Americas functioned as both a crucible and proving ground for a new, racialised understanding of the human, which she calls ‘Man’. Focusing on expeditionary narratives written by sailors on Frobisher’s three voyages to Baffin Island, the article treats these narratives as examples of travel writing, a genre occupying the mobile, labile threshold between history and fiction which has often mediated the comprehension of difference, hierarchy and (international) order. Focusing on these texts’ treatments of race and otherness, the article argues that the Arctic was a key site where the terms of relationality governing English interaction with the so-called ‘New World’ and its people were hesitatingly, clumsily and often violently worked out.

Refusing Race: Cultural Capital and Cultural Studies

Abstract This article argues for the limitations of John Guillory's analysis of canon formation in terms of its treatment of race. The article reads Guillory's 1997 essay “Bourdieu's Refusal” alongside Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant's 1999 essay “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” pointing in each to a sociological determinism, for which well-intentioned social actions intended to address racial and gendered inequalities of representation seem only to prop up structures of market domination. In spite of Bourdieu's resistance to American discourses of racial identity, the article argues, the “globalization of race” in fact allows for the emergence of a relatively unmediated political discourse. Cultural studies, in particular, provides an entrance to that project. One limitation of racial politics is that it does not necessarily impact the structure of economic relations, but at the same time, purely class or economic struggles do not necessarily alter noneconomic modes of class domination in the social and cultural sphere, nor the symbolic violence of social hierarchies such as race or gender.

Voice of Resistance: Exploring Apartheid, Power, and Race in Nadine Gordimer’s Selected Novels

This research article interprets Gordimer's novels as an expression of resistance against black oppression in pre-apartheid South Africa. Looking at her insightful and evocative depictions of some of the major political issues in selected works, the present work discusses their relevance and importance in the contemporary world. The current paper uses a qualitative approach to examine the impact of the apartheid regime on individuals and communities in South Africa, as well as the impact of political events on individuals, the author's preoccupation with power and its impact on people's lives as well as her treatment of race and related issues. Gordimer highlights how political events and power structures can influence and disrupt the lives of individuals and communities through her characters and their experiences. Her works offer a vivid and insightful critique of how apartheid regimes and other political systems are used to control and manipulate individuals and communities.

Unspoken

Unspoken Sara K. Day "Children should be seen and not heard." This old proverb may not be asserted frequently today, but the underlying assumptions—that well-behaved children will be quiet and obedient, that children have more to learn from adults than vice versa, that children must wait for an adult to acknowledge them—continue to shape power dynamics between adults and children in many ways. At the same time, silences surround children in terms of what adults believe should be said to (or written for) them; some topics are considered dangerous; some language is considered inappropriate; some information is considered indoctrination. As we have seen an increasing number of attempts to ban books in schools and libraries across the United States, especially those by and about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, it is useful to consider the specific ways in which demands that children not speak intersect with ideas about what should not be said to children. This issue opens with Sarah Selden's "Harlem Renaissance or Momentary Aberration?: An Analysis of the Newbery's Progress toward Racial Inclusivity," an examination of two key moments in the history of children's literature's most visible prize. The first moment is 1975, when Virginia Hamilton was the first Black author to win the Newbery, followed two years later by Mildred D. Taylor. The second is forty years later, when in 2015 the prize was awarded to Kwame Alexander, with Jacqueline Woodson being awarded a Newbery Honor. Selden examines both the contexts surrounding these key moments—including, among other elements, the changing make-up of Newbery committees—but also the ways in which Black authors' treatment of race and racism has potentially influenced prizing. In turn, she looks to the lack of critical conversation about most of these texts as a reflection of a larger, often unspoken assumption that they are more useful in elementary school classrooms than literary scholarship. The question of what goes unspoken also affects what messages are embraced in children's literature, especially in times of political discord. Like Selden, Saffyre Falkenberg focuses on a specific chronological moment in her article "All Are Welcome: Picture Books and Liberal Multiculturalism Post Trump." [End Page 131] Using Jodi Melamed's work on liberal multiculturalism and official antiracisms as a framework, Falkenberg examines the ways in which four picture books by white authors published after the 2016 election of former president Donald Trump emphasize diversity and inclusion without working to disrupt oppressive systems. Falkenberg's analysis emphasizes the distinction between attitude and action, especially in terms of the assumption that increasing diverse representation in children's books is enough to make needed changes rather than a starting point that requires further engagement and work. In "'Infinite Others': Mythpunk and Middle-Eastern Folklore in Catherynne M. Valente's Young Adult Novels," Teresa Michals and Fizza Fatima illustrate how Valente attempts to disrupt fantasy conventions that code the racialized Other as evil while uplifting Western figures and values. Comparing Valente's novels to those of C. S. Lewis—whose Narnia series perhaps best encapsulates this tendency to binarize West vs. East, good vs. evil—Michals and Fatima point to the ways in which modern authors can resist the stereotypes and xenophobia in classic children's fantasy literature. In her Fairyland series as well as her novel The Glass Town Games, Valente casts a wide net, drawing on figures and symbols from a variety of traditions and complicating the straightforward binary that so frequently works to uphold Eurocentric worldviews as superior to those from other cultures. "A Girl Verses the World: The Poetics of Asian American Childhood in Thanhha Lai's Inside Out & Back Again" by Stephen Dudas likewise investigates the intersection of cultures—in this case, through the figure of narrator Hà, a young refugee who chronicles her experience as her family flees Vietnam for the United States. Lai's verse novel attends in important ways to the role of speech in Hà's journey, particularly as she grapples with the sounds of the English language and the challenges of navigating her new neighborhood and school; her literal efforts to speak up and speak out are clearly tied to the development of her...

Jack London and the Sea by Anita Duneer

Reviewed by: Jack London and the Sea by Anita Duneer Kenneth K. Brandt (bio) Jack London and the Sea, by Anita Duneer. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2022. 225 pp. Cloth $54.95. Anita Duneer’s discerning and informative Jack London and the Sea is the first book-length study of the maritime influences, themes, and sources in the writing of Jack London. Through London’s sea writing, Duneer explores how the author depicts “big philosophical ideas about race, heredity, gender roles, and sexuality, individuality, and community, human difference and common humanity” (2). Duneer asserts: “Like his American predecessors, London envisioned new American characters, whose ideologies of self and the world are challenged by the brutal forces of nature and exposure to social and cultural differences” (3). The crucial opposition in London’s maritime writing for Duneer is the juxtaposition of the “maritime romantic ideal” of the bygone Age of Sail (with its nostalgic past) against the often-grim reality of shipboard life and the modern Age of Steam (with its capitalist oppression). Duneer explains that London saw “the sea as a liberating realm of adventure, discovery, and romantic possibility. Yet he always countered romance with a gritty realism to interrogate the ideologies and larger power structures that the sea imported from the land” (33). As Duneer reminds us, London tends to plot a course of “idealized realism” (5) in all things nautical. The first chapter, “The Call of the Sea,” focuses on the idea of the sea as an extension of the frontier and an escape from the restraints of civilization, which London often imagines as a more primal realm suitable for quests of romantic self-actualization. Land is ordinary, while the sea brims with freedom and opportunity. Offering specific examples from London’s extensive subject files on sea-related topics, she elaborates on the maritime romantic ideal by discussing sea chantey-inspired poetry and accounts of “hell-ships,” sensational travel narratives, and nautical pseudo-histories and satires. The discussion of London and surfing is particularly notable. [End Page 89] Duneer argues that London’s understanding of surfing is “Zen-like, accepting the real power of the ocean” (21). In this chapter and throughout the book, Duneer skillfully interweaves discussions of key sea-writers for London: Stevenson, Cooper, Melville, Kipling, Dana, Norris, and others. Chapter 2, “The Maritime Romantic Ideal on the San Francisco Bay,” provides nuanced readings of two early London works most scholars skim: The Cruise of the Dazzler (carefully analyzed alongside Kipling’s Captain Courageous) and the short story collection Tales of the Fish Patrol. Chapter 3, “Hell Ships and Seafaring Women,” examines The Sea-Wolf and The Mutiny of the Elsinore. Duneer studiously reads The Sea-Wolf against Norris’s Moran of the Lady Letty. One of the book’s major high points is her reading of The Mutiny of the Elsinore. She contrasts this novel with The People of the Abyss and “How I Became a Socialist,” rightly identifying The Mutiny of the Elsinore as a “social Darwinian burlesque” (47). This novel founders because its tangled plot of love, philosophy, and racist characters is devoid of the “humanistic social philosophy that readers expect from the best of London’s social writing” (70). Overall, Duneer sees London’s treatment of race and white privileged in his sea fiction as mixed: “London’s maritime writing presents conflicting views of race and white privilege, leaving some assumptions unexamined and some explicitly critiqued” (170). In Chapter 4, “Crafting the Sea in Martin Eden,” Duneer finds London’s Martin Eden “flooded with language and imagery of the sea” (71). She asserts that this Künstlerroman is “a reversal of [the] motif of initiation” in which the protagonist’s “journey turns inward as Martin attempts (and ultimately fails) to find his existential bearings, and ultimately downward, as Martin forces himself into the depths of the sea to escape an existence of surfaces, both on land and in the water” (75). In the fifth chapter, “The Specter of Survival Cannibalism,” Duneer showcases how London taps into primal fears “through the dark doubling of the gothic and Darwinian” (91). She specifically catalogs how London’s writing reflects common tropes from various cannibalism...

From David Walker to John Chilembwe: Global Black Collectivity as Resisting Race and Affirming Culture

ABSTRACT Western notions of race have never been for us. Yet culture has historically functioned as an “insider” discourse, representing our ways of living, knowing, and communing with one another. How, then, might Black folks remain mindful in our treatments of race and culture, ever cognizant of how we wield these constructs to our collective global advantage? In this essay, I reflect on how three Africana historical figures have engaged this question: (1) David Walker, whose sense of literacy in Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World centered free and enslaved Black audiences as cultural “insiders,” (2) C.L.R. James, whose evolving sense of collective Black identity prompted him to write texts such as The Black Jacobins, a Black-centered interpretation of the Haitian Revolution, and (3) Reverend John Chilembwe, whose Africana global alliances and literacy-based leadership ignited the Nyasaland Uprising against colonial oppression in Malawi. I argue that these three figures resisted race by affirming global Black collectivity as a cultural homeplace, thus informing how we may theorize and practice Black rhetorical studies today.

The Racial Horizon of Utopia: Unthinking the Future of Race in Late Twentieth-Century American Utopian Novels

The Racial Horizon of Utopia: Unthinking the Future of Race in Late Twentieth-Century American Utopian Novels

The City Makers of Nairobi: An African Urban History

The City Makers of Nairobi: An African Urban History

Tolkien, Thompson, English Modernity, and the Left

Tolkien, Thompson, English Modernity, and the Left Ewan Cameron (bio) Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. —J.R.R. Tolkien The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making. —E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class There has been something of a desire by those of all ideologies to claim Tolkien for their own cause, and while this essay may follow similar lines, the attempt is not to say that Tolkien was left wing: such a statement would be anachronistic and false. Rather, this is an argument for Tolkien as a resource for those on the left, especially those of an anti-authoritarian stance. In particular, I look at the work of the British historian and socialist humanist E. P. Thompson as a figure whose projects and outlooks have significant intersections with Tolkien's work. Tolkien: Reactionary? To draw links between Tolkien and the left may appear strange to some. After all, Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, wrote that, in being a monarchist who was not exactly enamoured with democracy, Tolkien was right wing, albeit "in modern jargon" (Bio 128). There is also a charge that a reactionary mindset pervades Tolkien's work in both his depiction of political structures such as monarchy and also the undeniable racial element to his work. Perhaps the worst example of this is his description of the orcs, which ventures into the language of racial othering (Fimi, "Was Tolkien Really Racist?"). Born into Victorian society, Tolkien would almost inevitably inherit a racialized worldview that bled into his writings, yet his understanding [End Page 159] of race is perhaps best considered more as a mix of "confusion and vagueness" than any malicious intent (Fimi, Race and Cultural History 157). As he grew older, especially during the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, Tolkien was outspoken against racial chauvinism as it manifested in the world (Letters 37–38). He began to take pains to distance his own work from the appropriation of racists, noting that words such as "Nordic" had become associated with racist theories which he wanted nothing to do with (Letters 55–56). Despite his personal repudiation, the works of Tolkien continue to be claimed by far-right white supremacist groups (Martinez). Tolkien's treatment of race in his work is certainly problematic and it is not something that can or should be ignored. The racially coded language is regrettable and the cultural eurocentrism feels outdated. Nevertheless, our acknowledgement of Tolkien's imperfection, that he did not always live up to the high standards of some of his characters and themes, does not preclude us from finding meaningful value in the majority of his work and themes (Sisto and Marchese). Is it fair to say that Tolkien was a conservative of a reactionary nature, one whose creations appeared at the intersection of nostalgia and nationalism? For Raymond Williams, Tolkien belonged to a class of writers whose rural fantasies "scribbled over" the "real land and its people" (Williams, Country and the City 258). Fred Inglis would go even further, drawing fascist equivalences: for instance, "instead of Nuremberg, Frodo's farewell" (Inglis 40). Societies have claimed and reworked idioms of the past into the national myths of the present to justify a thoroughly modern nationalism (Hobsbawm 6), and Tolkien's conservatism is most prominent in his idealization of certain political formations, especially that of bloodline kingship. In The Lord of the Rings, this is taken to a somewhat absurd extent, with Aragorn taking his "rightful" place as king (RK, V, viii, 136) after a thousand years of his family's absence, somewhat equivalent to the descendants of Harold Godwinson showing up in the twenty-first century United Kingdom and attempting to eject the Windsors from Buckingham Palace. Tolkien also mostly favors aristocratic characters in his narratives, with the majority of speaking characters, whether they are human, dwarf, elf, or hobbit, being renowned for their elite lineage. Sam is a notable exception to this, of course, and...

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American EssayEmpire of Ruin: Black Classicism and American Imperial CultureReaping Something New: African American Transformations of Victorian Literature

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American EssayEmpire of Ruin: Black Classicism and American Imperial CultureReaping Something New: African American Transformations of Victorian Literature

White Subjectivity and Black Nationalism in José Muñoz and Carlos Sampayo’s Alack Sinner Comic “Vietblues” (1975)

The Argentine artist José Muñoz and writer Carlos Sampayo began publishing their Alack Sinner detective comic in the Italian magazine Alterlinus in 1974, after which its stories appeared in French, Spanish, Argentinian, and US publications. Beginning in 2015, the complete Alack Sinner was republished in several languages, winning over a new generation of readers and critics. In the fourth tale, “Vietblues” (1975), Muñoz and Sampayo liberated their storytelling from the limitations of pastiche and formula to challenge the genre conventions of the “private detective” crime narrative. The comic, set in New York City, foregrounds a white protagonist who refuses to partner with a group of Black nationalists intent on tearing down racist power structures. This article shows how the comic explores two definitions of history and political action: an idealistic, subjective, and individualistic one, and a more historical vision predicated on connections between oppressed groups. Muñoz and Sampayo argue for the possibility of interethnic solidarity while documenting their protagonist’s inability to successfully act on that promise. Key to the analysis are Muñoz and Sampayo’s treatment of race and the ways their white protagonist depoliticizes the African American experience by projecting it into himself as a dream state.

Palestine along the colour line: race, colonialism, and construction labour, 1918–1948

ABSTRACT This article examines how racialized concepts of the labouring body shaped the division of labour in British-ruled Palestine’s construction industry between 1918–1948. In contending with Palestine’s “labour question”, Zionist Jews, British authorities and Palestinian Arabs engaged in competing and overlapping racial and anti-racist projects embedded in global and imperial racial thought and politics. Israel/Palestine’s racial division of labour and the land’s twentieth-century social structures were an expression of the continuous evolution of the encounter between such racial projects and between changing material, political and social conditions. Narrating this encounter allows us to move beyond treatments of race and racial politics as abstractions, demonstrating how they marked and classified bodies, and shaped experiences, lives and landscapes.

Colour-blind educational leadership policy: A critical race theory analysis of school principalship standards in South Africa

In the light of recent media reports of racism in South African schools, this paper examines the role of school principalship standards in addressing race in South African educational leadership. The paper draws on tenets of critical race theory to examine how issues of race are addressed in the Policy for School Principalship Standard in South Africa and the implications thereof for leadership preparation and leadership practice. The methodology involves the employment of content analysis underpinned by key tenets of critical race theory that challenge notions of colour-blindness, meritocracy and neutrality. The analysis reveals that there is no explicit mention or treatment of race and ethnicity as social constructs in the principalship standards. It also reveals that diversity and culture are used more, suggesting the emphasis on difference rather than inequality. The paper argues that, although driven by principles of social justice, the Policy for School Principalship Standard is colour-blind. Through this omission, the policy denies the existence of racism and fails to recognise the power and influence of school leaders (and principals, in particular) in shaping the race dynamic in schools. The paper ends with implications for the improvement of leadership policy and practice.

Hegel, Islam and liberalism: Religion and the shape of world history

Hegel’s philosophy is in tension with liberalism, containing both liberalizing tendencies and rejecting liberal norms. I explore this tension by investigating the relationship between religion, fanaticism and world history in Hegel’s discussion of Islam. Drawing on recent work that considers Hegel’s treatment of race and world history, I show that he views Islam as a form of fanaticism that is antithetical to Christian Europe. This rejection of Islam stands in contrast to his treatment of the French Revolution, which is a fanaticism that can be incorporated into world history. I conclude that Hegel does not provide resources for narrating a history of a more inclusive Europe, but that interrogating his philosophy offers strategies for thinking askew the liberal ‘problem-space’ and reconsidering identities formed in opposition to the Islamic fanatic. Such an interrogation reveals the assumptions at work in contemporary debates about the liberalization of Islam.

Letter from the Editors

Other| December 01 2019 Letter from the Editors Resources for American Literary Study (2019) 41 (2): v–vi. https://doi.org/10.5325/resoamerlitestud.41.2.v Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Letter from the Editors. Resources for American Literary Study 1 December 2019; 41 (2): v–vi. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/resoamerlitestud.41.2.v Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressResources for American Literary Study Search Advanced Search It is with pleasure that I introduce issue 41.2 of Resources for American Literary Study. My coeditor, Paul Thifault, and I are delighted to continue the journal's tradition of publishing essays and book reviews pertaining to archival discovery and bibliographical analysis in American literature. The current issue offers studies across a wide range of authors and eras. In this issue's “Prospects” essay, Andrew C. Higgins explores recent developments in the study of the long-neglected Fireside poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose complexity, transnationalism, and treatment of race, gender, and sexuality offer much potential for new inquiry. The behind-the-scenes efforts of Robert Coles to support the burgeoning career of Cormac McCarthy forms the subject of Dianne C. Luce's essay, informed by her extensive work on Coles's archival papers. Kit Kumiko Toda provides a new resource for scholars of T. S. Eliot: a compendium of the various editions of Elizabethan and Jacobean... You do not currently have access to this content.

Ignoring race: a comparative analysis of education policy in British Columbia and Ontario

ABSTRACT Racial equity in Canadian education remains elusive. Despite Canada’s status as a multicultural nation, many minority students continue to be marginalised. In this article, we compare equity-related education policy in two Canadian provinces – Ontario and British Columbia – to ascertain how race and racialized students are understood in official documents. After reviewing provincial policy contexts from the early 1990s onward, we discuss the results of a content analysis of provincial education policy documents using Critical Policy Analysis and Critical Race Theory. We argue that the treatment of race and equity in these documents demonstrates ‘symbolic anti-racism,’ rather than substantive anti-racism, in three key ways: 1) the lack of robust education policy related to racial equity; 2) the construction of racism as an individual characteristic rather than a structural problem in the education system; and 3) the near-absence of race-related data collection. Policy recommendations follow based on these findings.

Defamation, Race and Racism

Defamation law seeks to balance the protection of reputation and freedom of speech. It is known to have an inhibiting effect on the exercise of free speech, which can affect all forms of writing, including academic critique. Reputation is a highly individual interest. Consequently, defamation law is not an effective means of dealing with aspersions on aspects of collective identity, such as race. Increasingly, however, allegations of racism are being litigated in defamation claims in Australia. Because an allegation of racism affects individual reputation, it is more amenable to protection by defamation law than racist attacks. This article examines Australian defamation law's treatment of race and racism, focusing in particular on liability and defences, with an emphasis on the impact of defamation law on academic writing.

Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels by Jean Wyatt

Reviewed by: Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels by Jean Wyatt Milo Obourn (bio) Jean Wyatt. Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels. U of Georgia P, 2017. xii+, 248 pp. ISBN: 978-08-20-35060-8 (HB); ISBN: 978-08-20-35059-2 (epub). $74.95 "In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change." Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" (53) Although not referenced directly, I could not help thinking of Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic" while reading Jean Wyatt's Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels, a book of insightful literary criticism that reads Toni Morrison's narrative choices as a set of ethics in relation to the concept of love–or, as Lorde might put it, a politics of the erotic. Wyatt's book interweaves close readings of Morrison's narrative style with arguments about race, gender, power, narrative form, psychoanalysis, authorial ethics, contemporary modes of accessing the traumas of US slavery, reader responsibility, and Morrison's personal growth as a widely influential writer and thinker. Following Wyatt's lead, we might come to understand one of Morrison's central creative projects as examining the ways in which our world can be truly different by reclaiming and reinventing a love that has been taken from African American people through a traumatic history of slavery and its systemic repercussions. As Lorde states, the "word erotic comes from the Greek eros, the personification of love in all its aspects—born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony" (55). When Wyatt puts love at the center of her reading of Morrison's narrative ethics, she highlights that in order to love well, to love ethically, to love without recreating the cycle of trauma, one must love creatively and without a fixed idea of what love is. Wyatt shows how Morrison draws the reader into this understanding of love through experimental stylistic techniques that engage "reader[s] in a [End Page 132] dialogue between [their] ethical convictions and the structures of the text that call them into question" (16). Wyatt provides us with a timeline that contextualizes her focus on Morrison's later novels, claiming that, "Beloved represents a radical shift to more experimental narrative forms" (7). These forms are not experimental simply for the sake of newness; rather, they carry an ethical weight. Wyatt defines her use of "ethical" here as a way to "evoke the narrative techniques through which these later texts implicate the reader, often by drawing out a reader's preconceptions about love, race, and gender—and then inducing their reader to rethink and reevaluate those ideas" (2). This ethics creates not only a certain kind of reader response but what I would call a reader responsibility, in which readers are co-creators in the meaning of the narrative and thus their belief systems are implicated in constructing the text and also challenged by the texts' multiple perspectives and challenges to any one way of knowing. Love appears, in Wyatt's readings of Morrison, as the thematic glue that connects Morrison's treatment of race and gender across her work. In its most radical form, it becomes a kind of ethics that keeps one in a constant mode of creativity, forever rethinking dominant narratives and reinventing places for oneself in which one can not only survive historical and personal traumas, but also discover rich interpersonal and communal ways of thriving. Wyatt posits that love in Morrison can reflect the cycle of trauma—that is, one can love unethically or violently. However, she also suggests that love in Morrison can take on the role of challenging the cultural effects of shared traumas to African American bodyminds and can offer ways to play outside of or in creative relation to the dissonance created by the shared traumas that have stunted understandings of love and reproduced violent power dynamics. Wyatt deftly employs a psychoanalytic lens to draw connections between love and narrative form. Psychoanalysis is an appropriate tool given its concerns with...