Overview

Many of the sights and sounds that Americans associate with slavery are rooted in a grand historical myth. The image of the Big House, sitting atop carefully manicured rolling green hills is, in large part, a fantasy—as is the idea of the plantation as an expansive family home to chivalrous planters and happy slaves. Still, these myths persist. Jason R. Young explores the persistence of these myths and the historical memory of slavery by focusing on the elite white mythmakers who helped shape our understanding of slavery. In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and curated a highly sanitized view of slavery. They imagined a once and future plantation society that would reestablish them as the proper heirs of the slave past. In the process, they crafted a set of dangerously durable and virulent stereotypes about slavery. Focusing on literature, art, and performance, Young examines both the power and the folly of these ideas. In uncovering the origins of these racial myths, The Mask of Memory resists these racial fantasies and challenges their stubborn resurgence in our own time.

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9781469694344

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Reviews

“Young writes with originality and versatility on the problems at the nexus of race, power, profit, performance, authenticity, meaning-making, and historical memory. This compelling work will change how we understand representations of slavery.”—Lisa Gail Collins, author of Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt “A lyrical, witty, and incisive work that exposes the absurdity of the purported racial expertise claimed by elite white Charlestonians. Young shows how their distorted narratives about enslaved people persist to this day.”—Sharla M. Fett, author of Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade

“Young writes with originality and versatility on the problems at the nexus of race, power, profit, performance, authenticity, meaning-making, and historical memory. This compelling work will change how we understand representations of slavery.”—Lisa Gail Collins, author of Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt “A lyrical, witty, and incisive work that exposes the absurdity of the purported racial expertise claimed by elite white Charlestonians. Young shows how their distorted narratives about enslaved people persist to this day.”—Sharla M. Fett, author of Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade

""A lyrical, witty, and incisive work that exposes the absurdity of the purported racial expertise claimed by elite white Charlestonians. Young shows how their distorted narratives about enslaved people persist to this day.""--Sharla M. Fett, author of Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade ""Young writes with originality and versatility on the problems at the nexus of race, power, profit, performance, authenticity, meaning-making, and historical memory. This compelling work will change how we understand representations of slavery.""--Lisa Gail Collins, author of Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee's Bend Quilt

Author Information

Jason R. Young is professor of history at the University of Michigan.

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