Black Women and Energies of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Haitian and American Literature

This book redefines energy and modernity by exploring how early Black transnational networks practiced energy across Haiti and the USA.

Mary Grace Albanese (Author)

9781009314244, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 November 2023

206 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

'Albanese's monograph participates in the well-established turn in American studies towards the transatlantic, the hemispheric, the transnational, and the diasporic. More specifically, the book will be a valuable addition to the recent revival in cross-disciplinary approaches to the relations between the US and Haiti in the long nineteenth-century … The book stands out as an attempt to combine this hemispheric approach with the epistemologies of queer studies and energy humanities.' Cécile Roudeau, American Literary History

Black Women and Energies of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Haitian and American Literature intervenes in traditional narratives of 19th-century American modernity by situating Black women at the center of an increasingly connected world. While traditional accounts of modernity have emphasized advancements in communication technologies, animal and fossil fuel extraction, and the rise of urban centers, Mary Grace Albanese proposes that women of African descent combated these often violent regimes through diasporic spiritual beliefs and practices, including spiritual possession, rootwork, midwifery, mesmerism, prophecy, and wandering. It shows how these energetic acts of resistance were carried out on scales large and small: from the constrained corners of the garden plot to the expansive circuits of global migration. By examining the concept of energy from narratives of technological progress, capital accrual and global expansion, this book uncovers new stories that center Black women at the heart of a pulsating, revolutionary world.

Introduction: modulating modernity
1. Powering the soul: queer energies in Haitian vodou
2. Marie Laveau's generational arts: healing and midwifery in New Orleans
3. Freedom's conduit: spiritual justice in 'Theresa, A Haytian Tale'
4. 'A Wandering Maniac': Sojourner Truth's demonic marronage
5. Mesmeric revolution: Hopkins's matrilineal Haiti
Coda: effluent futures.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]