slavery
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On Gardening for a Dead President
At Catapult, J.D. Ho takes readers for a walk in her shoes, gardening where slaves were once forced to grow poison ivy for a president whom the world now praises in all his whitewashed glory: For obvious reasons, my life…
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Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote: Quentin James
What the hell do I have to lose in this country? Honestly, I don’t know where to begin.
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The Rumpus Interview with Russell Banks
Russell Banks discusses his new book, Voyager: Travel Writings, why we are never free from our history, and how writing saved his life.
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Riding the Underground
The Underground Railroad has always fascinated Americans, and recently it has exploded in popularity, with books, TV shows, and even representation on United States currency. But does the mythologized version of the Underground Railroad live up to actual history? In a recent New…
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History as Structure
In a Q & A with debut novelist Yaa Gyasi on the ZYZZYVA blog, Ismail Muhammad asks Gyasi to expound on narrative structure and the far-reaching effects of the international slave trade: I realized that I was interested in tracking how slavery, colonialism,…
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Ambiguous Understanding
Author of The Black History of the White House Clarence Lusane addresses Michelle Obama’s statements at the 2016 DNC about the role of slave labor in the construction of the White House: I think [George Washington] always had an ambiguous understanding in relationship…
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The Rumpus Interview with Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi discusses her debut novel Homegoing, growing up in Alabama, the multiplicity of black experiences, the legacy of slavery, and her writing process.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ben H. Winters
Ben H. Winters discusses his new novel Underground Airlines about an America where the Civil War never took place, writing speculative fiction, and modern racism.
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Sci-Fi and Slavery
“The first impulse is to go, oh man, are you supposed to be writing about that, as a white American?” he said. “We tend to think of racism and slavery as something that’s appropriate only for black artists to engage…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: What’s in a Name? A Tale of Two Alis and Three Muhammads
Few things are as important to me as my name.
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Sleeping with Machetes
At the New York Times, Isabel Wilkerson reviews Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel, Homegoing. In this new novel, Gyasi explores the consequences of slavery in 18th-century America and West Africa: Throughout, the focus is on the wounds inflicted on the colonized and the…
