Animating Black and Brown Liberation

<p><b>Offers a new framework for reading American literatures that critically links African American and Latinx traditions and struggles for liberation.</b></p><p><i>Animating Black and Brown Liberation</i> introduces a vital new tool for reading American literatures. Rooted in both ancient Egyptian ideas about life and cutting-edge theories of animacy or levels of aliveness this tool-ankhing-enables Michael Datcher to examine the ways African American and Latinx literatures respond to and ultimately work to resist hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and state-sponsored oppression. Weaving together close readings and politically informed philosophical reflection Datcher considers the work of writer-activists Toni Cade Bambara Cherríe Moraga Gloria Anzaldúa June Jordan Salvador Plascencia and Ishmael Reed in light of theoretical interventions by Jane Bennett Mel Y. Chen Bruno Latour Michel Foucault Paulo Freire and Erica R. Edwards. How he asks can cultural production positively influence Black and Brown material conditions and mobilize collective action off the page? How can art-based counterpublics provide a foundation for Black and Brown community organizing? What emerges from Datcher's innovative analysis is a frank assessment of the links between embodied experiences of racialization as well as a distinctive vision of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature as a repository of emancipatory strategies with real-world applications.</p>