Raising the Dead

Raising the Dead is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary exploration of death's relation to subjectivity in twentieth-century American literature and culture. Sharon Patricia Holland contends that black subjectivity in particular is connected intimately to death. For Holland, travelling through &quote;the space of death&quote; gives us, as cultural readers, a nuanced and appropriate metaphor for understanding what is at stake when bodies, discourses, and communities collide.Holland argues that the presence of blacks, Native Americans, women, queers, and other &quote;minorities&quote; in society is, like death, &quote;almost unspeakable.&quote; She gives voice to-or raises-the dead through her examination of works such as the movie Menace II Society, Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Randall Kenan's A Visitation of Spirits, and the work of the all-white, male, feminist hip-hop band Consolidated. In challenging established methods of literary investigation by putting often-disparate voices in dialogue with each other, Holland forges connections among African-American literature and culture, queer and feminist theory.Raising the Dead will be of interest to students and scholars of American culture, African-American literature, literary theory, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.