Overview

Examining revenge narratives as a feminist response to slavery and settler colonialism From Octavia Butler's Kindred to The Round House by Louise Erdrich, themes of retribution resound throughout the work of renowned Black and Indigenous women and queer authors. Revealing how the Black Power Movement and the American Indian Movement influenced literature from the 1960s onward, Murderous Feeling explores how these writers have employed revenge narratives as a response to white supremacy and colonialism. Chad Benito Infante shows how, rather than using retributive violence to cultivate a heroic, masculine ideal, Black and Native women and queer writers use revenge as a way to raise philosophical questions about justice and the reclamation of power in the face of white supremacy. Pairing canonical texts-including work by James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, Craig Womack, Toni Morrison, and others-he demonstrates how this uniquely queer and feminist literary tradition, the ""grammar of interrogation,"" allows for generative ambivalence and curiosity about the possibilities and failures of violence. In highlighting these narratives' potential to steer anticolonial efforts, Murderous Feeling reconceptualizes literary violence not as an individualized act of cleansing but as a tool for revolutionary inquiry. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

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9781517919870

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Reviews

""A brilliant look at the uses and possibilities of violence in Black and Indigenous texts, Murderous Feeling offers a provocative window into canonical novels by Walker, Silko, Baldwin, Butler, Momaday, Erdrich, and more. Chad Benito Infante presents a highly original and compelling analysis of violence as an ethic of care. This is a must-read book.""—Lisa Tatonetti, author of Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinity ""Using the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality as a barometer for understanding the social and affective structures of identity and supremacy, Chad Benito Infante renders a bold, innovative analysis of how US Indigenous and African American queer and women authors have imagined anticolonial reprisal.""—Marlon B. Ross, author of Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness

Author Information

Chad Benito Infante is assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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