The Inhuman Race - Hardcover

Cassuto, Leonard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231103360 ISBN 13: 9780231103367

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Reconstructs a dialogue between objectifiers (American Puritans, slaveowners) and objectifieds (Native Americans, slaves) by arguing that the literature of race in antebellum America is the continuing story of an encounter with the grotesque. The focus is on literature-from Puritan captivity accounts, fugitive slave narratives, and proslavery fiction to the work of Melville, Stowe, Douglass, and their contemporaries. But Cassuto also ranges from colonial prodigies to nineteenth-century freak shows and Sambo stereotyping, from horror movies to the Holocaust Museum.

About this title

About the Author

Leonard Cassuto is associate professor of English and American literature at Fordham University.

Reviews

Cassuto (English and American literature, Fordham Univ.) has written a work that, like earlier works such as Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (LJ 5/1/92) and Eric Sundquist's To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature (LJ 1/93), examines the importance of race in American literature. Cassuto's focus is "the attempt to turn a person into a thing on the basis of race," an attempt that the author feels ultimately can never be successful. To demonstrate his point, he discusses several captivity narratives, slave narratives, and antebellum fictional works. Perhaps the most interesting section concerns the Sambo stereotype in fictional works such as Sarah Hale's Northwood, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and William Wells Brown's Clotel. Cassuto has skillfully blended an array of literary and cultural sources into a learned, provocative, and quite readable work. For academic libraries.?Louis J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn Campus, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231103360
• ISBN 13: 9780231103367
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288