Skip to main content
Blood at the Root

Blood at the Root

By Lightweis-Goff, Jennie

Published by State University of New York Press

English 235 pages 2011
Estimated reading time: 4 h 19 min
PDF

About this book

Examines the relationship of lynching to black and white citizenship in the 19th and 20th century U.S. through a focus on historical, visual, cultural, and literary texts. In Blood at the Root, winner of the SUNY Press 2009 Dissertation/First Book Prize in African American Studies, Jennie Lightweis-Goff examines the centrality of lynching to American culture, focusing particularly on the ways in which literature, popular culture, and art have constructed the illusion of secrecy and obsolescence to conceal the memory of violence. Including critical study of writers and artists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, George Schuyler, and Kara Walker, Lightweis-Goff also incorporates her personal experience in the form of a year-long travelogue of visits to lynching sites. Her research and travel move outside the American South and rural locales to demonstrate the fiction of confining racism to certain areas of the country and the denial of collective responsibility for racial violence. Lightweis-Goff seeks to implicate societal attitude in the actions of the few and to reveal the legacy of violence that has been obscured by more valiant memories in the public sphere. In exploring the ways that spatial and literary texts replace lynching with proclamations of innocence and regret, Lightweis-Goff argues that racial violence is an incompletely erupted trauma of American life whose very hiddenness links the past to still-present practices of segregation and exclusion.

Availability

Blood at the Root is available as PDF at 9 online bookshops. Bookshops carrying it include Bajalibros Argentina, Bajalibros Latam, Bookshop Uruguay.

Language
English
Share

Frequently asked questions

In what formats is Blood at the Root available?
Blood at the Root is available as PDF at 9 online bookshops.
Where can I buy Blood at the Root?
You can buy Blood at the Root at Bajalibros Argentina, Bajalibros Latam, Bookshop Uruguay. Compare every option in the list on this page.
How long does it take to read Blood at the Root?
At an average reading pace, Blood at the Root takes about 4 h 19 min to read (235 pages).

Ratings & reviews

No ratings yet. Be the first to review this book.

Sign in to rate and review this book.

Comments

Sign in to join the conversation.

No comments yet.