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18 reviews for:
The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies
Tiffany Lethabo King
4.54 AVERAGE
18 reviews for:
The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies
Tiffany Lethabo King
4.54 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
A really beautiful book on Black and Native livingness under duress. I’m not yet sure if I’m sold on how the author is thinking through the potential of eros and the erotic to bring communities together, as I think there needs to be more engagement on erotic ethics; however, the project itself is gorgeous and excessive in all the ways it needs to be. So many threads to chase and think with.
The preface was so beautiful it brought me to tears.
Especially enjoyed chapters 2 and 5 - cartographic enclosures, "home," and rewriting possibilities. Was especially struck by the descriptions of diasporic Black people in Canada, and want to read more in this area.
Chapters 3 and 4 were lengthy examinations of "Daughters of the Dust" as a way to rethink boundaries of self and eros, and as a challenge to notions of sovereignty. Powerful but also reminded me that I don't vibe with queerness as metaphor. (Thanks to reading this I figured out that my discomfort is because treating groups of people like a metaphor bothers me in general, so that's something.)
I would like to read more of the author's thoughts on how Marxism and queerness reproduce the limits of Whiteness, but that's out of scope for this book so I'll just have to look for other pieces :)
Limitations: the focus is strictly on Anglo-America with references to Africa limited to a starting point for diaspora. (I get the reasoning, but also couldn't help but think how much I'd have appreciated the inclusion of [a:Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o|51936|Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252353249p2/51936.jpg] and [a:Francis B. Nyamnjoh|102825|Francis B. Nyamnjoh|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png].)
Overall: beautifully written (in a highly academic sense), thought-provoking, and added half a dozen new books to my TBR.
Especially enjoyed chapters 2 and 5 - cartographic enclosures, "home," and rewriting possibilities. Was especially struck by the descriptions of diasporic Black people in Canada, and want to read more in this area.
Chapters 3 and 4 were lengthy examinations of "Daughters of the Dust" as a way to rethink boundaries of self and eros, and as a challenge to notions of sovereignty. Powerful but also reminded me that I don't vibe with queerness as metaphor. (Thanks to reading this I figured out that my discomfort is because treating groups of people like a metaphor bothers me in general, so that's something.)
I would like to read more of the author's thoughts on how Marxism and queerness reproduce the limits of Whiteness, but that's out of scope for this book so I'll just have to look for other pieces :)
Limitations: the focus is strictly on Anglo-America with references to Africa limited to a starting point for diaspora. (I get the reasoning, but also couldn't help but think how much I'd have appreciated the inclusion of [a:Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o|51936|Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252353249p2/51936.jpg] and [a:Francis B. Nyamnjoh|102825|Francis B. Nyamnjoh|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png].)
Overall: beautifully written (in a highly academic sense), thought-provoking, and added half a dozen new books to my TBR.
Gabriella Lott
Reading Response 3: The Black Shoals
September 17, 2021
GEOG 814: Black Geographies
In The Black Shoals, Tiffany Lethabo King explores how Black movements for abolition and Indigenous movements for decolonization can interrupt settler-conquistador flows of memory, momentum, and theory. Lethabo King defines movements very broadly, including the intimate relationships Black and Indigenous people can have with one another, as well as the conversations academics engage in to sharpen and refine their definitions of various theories. At their peak, these movement “shoals” can disrupt the operating theories about our history and our future as “humans” in the United States.
The Black Shoals introduces many helpful conceptual frameworks, including the term “conquistador-settler” to describe White people’s authoritative relationship to settler colonialism. Conversely, I think this term is the most useful in my own desire to understand the distinct, but still oppressive, ways that people of color can act as settlers and/or align with settler colonial states. While Lethabo King clearly acknowledges that “the terms of survival—or, said another way, the circumstances under which you as a Black or Indigenous person lived—were often tethered to the death of the Other”, outside of the early chapters, I think this book is more concerned with the ways Black Americans can participate in decolonial projects, and not with the ways they can uphold settler colonial projects.
However, the latter issue is one of the core topics I’d like to explore in this class, as it’s central to understanding the Black geographies created by my people: Reverse Migrators to the U.S. South. The “Reverse Migration” narrative includes people like my parents, who returned to the region my grandparents left during the Great Migration. I think the Reverse Migration narratives created by migrators and the people who study them are missing a lot of nuance and political analysis. For instance, I’ve heard many friends and family note that their DC paycheck can stretch a lot further in Charlotte. Perhaps subconsciously, this accepts the financial straits of people making a Charlotte paycheck in Charlotte, a region that has abysmal rates of upward mobility for Black families who never left. In this way, Reverse Migrators’ relative prosperity in the South is only possible because of the economic subjugation in “Black Mecca” regions like Atlanta and Charlotte. Furthermore, our relative prosperity is anchored to the oppression not only of poor Black families, but also the Catawba Nation, who are the original stewards of the subdivisions that now hold our privately-owned homes.
I want to clarify that I’m not saying I think all Reverse Migrators are settlers, as I know people are migrating with a broad range of financial motivations, familial connections, and political commitments. However, I am trying to continue last week’s discussion of how we can avoid the “imprecise binaries” applied to people in the Black Atlantic. , To borrow language from Jamaica Kincaid in A Small Place, I think the challenge with this conversation is that we are trying to discuss how Black Americans can contribute to “the horror of the deed” (neocolonialism and neoliberalism) while using the “language of the criminal.” I think this is what’s most helpful about The Black Shoals—Lethabo King provides us with an alternate grammar that falls outside of the “native or tourist” binary that you see in other decolonial texts like A Small Place.
Unfortunately, by the end of the book, I didn’t find Lethabo King’s suggestions for “joint healing” ethics to be very applied. I don’t want to discredit the examples of artistic, erotic, and ceremonial ethics, which I’m sure are very helpful to readers who are sculptors, pastors, or academics. However, for an everyday resident of still-occupied territory, I’m not sure The Black Shoals ultimately shared a lot about how to be in better relationship with Indigenous people. This is partially because I felt many of the acts of solidarity that Lethabo King does reference were a bit overdrawn. While I appreciated the examples towards the end about organizing work done in Toronto, I honestly rolled my eyes at her theorizing on how a fictional Indigenous character took on the cause of Blackness (probably a poor paraphrase here) due to his romantic partnership with a Gullah woman. I know one of my problems is that I read everything as a self-help book, and need to learn to appreciate theory for what it can provide apart from any concrete application. To Lethabo King’s credit, there are some helpful conceptual frameworks (noted above) and some really useful notes about cartography and betraying archives that will be of great use to my primary academic fields (urban planning and library sciences.) However, I still felt disappointed by the introduction’s promises to explore more of the practical elements of how readers might commit to “day-to-day struggles to affirm Black and Native life.”
Bibliography
Crawley, Ashon. “He Was An Architect: Little Richard And Blackqueer Grief.” NPR, December 22, 2020, sec. Music Features. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/948963753/little-richard-black-queer-grief-he-was-an-architect.
Ford, Tanisha C. “Should Black Northerners Move Back to the South?: Nonfiction.” New York Times (Online). New York: New York Times Company, March 2, 2021. 2494810917. ProQuest Central. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/should-black-northerners-move-back-south/docview/2494810917/se-2?accountid=14244.
Gilroy, Paul, 1956-. The Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993., 1993. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb2509059.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988., 1988. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb2230485.
King, Tiffany Lethabo, 1976-. The Black Shoals : Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Durham: Durham ; London : Duke University Press, 2019., 2019. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb9769334.
Semuels, Alana. “Why It’s So Hard to Get Ahead in the South.” The Atlantic (Online), April 4, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/south-mobility-charlotte/521763/.
Reading Response 3: The Black Shoals
September 17, 2021
GEOG 814: Black Geographies
In The Black Shoals, Tiffany Lethabo King explores how Black movements for abolition and Indigenous movements for decolonization can interrupt settler-conquistador flows of memory, momentum, and theory. Lethabo King defines movements very broadly, including the intimate relationships Black and Indigenous people can have with one another, as well as the conversations academics engage in to sharpen and refine their definitions of various theories. At their peak, these movement “shoals” can disrupt the operating theories about our history and our future as “humans” in the United States.
The Black Shoals introduces many helpful conceptual frameworks, including the term “conquistador-settler” to describe White people’s authoritative relationship to settler colonialism. Conversely, I think this term is the most useful in my own desire to understand the distinct, but still oppressive, ways that people of color can act as settlers and/or align with settler colonial states. While Lethabo King clearly acknowledges that “the terms of survival—or, said another way, the circumstances under which you as a Black or Indigenous person lived—were often tethered to the death of the Other”, outside of the early chapters, I think this book is more concerned with the ways Black Americans can participate in decolonial projects, and not with the ways they can uphold settler colonial projects.
However, the latter issue is one of the core topics I’d like to explore in this class, as it’s central to understanding the Black geographies created by my people: Reverse Migrators to the U.S. South. The “Reverse Migration” narrative includes people like my parents, who returned to the region my grandparents left during the Great Migration. I think the Reverse Migration narratives created by migrators and the people who study them are missing a lot of nuance and political analysis. For instance, I’ve heard many friends and family note that their DC paycheck can stretch a lot further in Charlotte. Perhaps subconsciously, this accepts the financial straits of people making a Charlotte paycheck in Charlotte, a region that has abysmal rates of upward mobility for Black families who never left. In this way, Reverse Migrators’ relative prosperity in the South is only possible because of the economic subjugation in “Black Mecca” regions like Atlanta and Charlotte. Furthermore, our relative prosperity is anchored to the oppression not only of poor Black families, but also the Catawba Nation, who are the original stewards of the subdivisions that now hold our privately-owned homes.
I want to clarify that I’m not saying I think all Reverse Migrators are settlers, as I know people are migrating with a broad range of financial motivations, familial connections, and political commitments. However, I am trying to continue last week’s discussion of how we can avoid the “imprecise binaries” applied to people in the Black Atlantic. , To borrow language from Jamaica Kincaid in A Small Place, I think the challenge with this conversation is that we are trying to discuss how Black Americans can contribute to “the horror of the deed” (neocolonialism and neoliberalism) while using the “language of the criminal.” I think this is what’s most helpful about The Black Shoals—Lethabo King provides us with an alternate grammar that falls outside of the “native or tourist” binary that you see in other decolonial texts like A Small Place.
Unfortunately, by the end of the book, I didn’t find Lethabo King’s suggestions for “joint healing” ethics to be very applied. I don’t want to discredit the examples of artistic, erotic, and ceremonial ethics, which I’m sure are very helpful to readers who are sculptors, pastors, or academics. However, for an everyday resident of still-occupied territory, I’m not sure The Black Shoals ultimately shared a lot about how to be in better relationship with Indigenous people. This is partially because I felt many of the acts of solidarity that Lethabo King does reference were a bit overdrawn. While I appreciated the examples towards the end about organizing work done in Toronto, I honestly rolled my eyes at her theorizing on how a fictional Indigenous character took on the cause of Blackness (probably a poor paraphrase here) due to his romantic partnership with a Gullah woman. I know one of my problems is that I read everything as a self-help book, and need to learn to appreciate theory for what it can provide apart from any concrete application. To Lethabo King’s credit, there are some helpful conceptual frameworks (noted above) and some really useful notes about cartography and betraying archives that will be of great use to my primary academic fields (urban planning and library sciences.) However, I still felt disappointed by the introduction’s promises to explore more of the practical elements of how readers might commit to “day-to-day struggles to affirm Black and Native life.”
Bibliography
Crawley, Ashon. “He Was An Architect: Little Richard And Blackqueer Grief.” NPR, December 22, 2020, sec. Music Features. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/948963753/little-richard-black-queer-grief-he-was-an-architect.
Ford, Tanisha C. “Should Black Northerners Move Back to the South?: Nonfiction.” New York Times (Online). New York: New York Times Company, March 2, 2021. 2494810917. ProQuest Central. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/should-black-northerners-move-back-south/docview/2494810917/se-2?accountid=14244.
Gilroy, Paul, 1956-. The Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993., 1993. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb2509059.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988., 1988. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb2230485.
King, Tiffany Lethabo, 1976-. The Black Shoals : Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Durham: Durham ; London : Duke University Press, 2019., 2019. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb9769334.
Semuels, Alana. “Why It’s So Hard to Get Ahead in the South.” The Atlantic (Online), April 4, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/south-mobility-charlotte/521763/.
Wow. This was real far over my head but what I got was absolutely fascinating. I'll be thinking this over for a while.
brilliant. brilliant.
I will be revisiting this for a while.
I will be revisiting this for a while.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This was just a powerful way of bringing together Black and Native studies, and using especially the the conquistador-settler as a new lens through which to understand the extreme violence that was involved in the settlement of the north American continent, not just ideologically but also in action. King uses the work of Sylvia Wynter a great deal to interrogate how the human is constructed in the spaces she writes about, as well as Afro-pessimist thought, but she manages to make the former very clear and use the latter to push for a different kind of futurity, especially by taking up C. Riley Snorton's use of fungibility and fugitivity to create spaces for Black people to thrive, rather than having the non-human or fungibility be a stopping point.
My favorite chapter was probably "Our Cherokee Uncles: Black and Native Erotics," which manages to highlight the intimacies possible between Black and Native people, and what that means for "alliances," the futures of both people, and move through and with the sticking points that usually crop up in the conflict between Black and Native studies.
It's just such a good book, and I'm hopeful that people will be citing it a ton in the future and following the example of as we continue to grapple with working between Black and Native studies. Plus, the bibliography is really great and I have a lot more to read now!
My favorite chapter was probably "Our Cherokee Uncles: Black and Native Erotics," which manages to highlight the intimacies possible between Black and Native people, and what that means for "alliances," the futures of both people, and move through and with the sticking points that usually crop up in the conflict between Black and Native studies.
It's just such a good book, and I'm hopeful that people will be citing it a ton in the future and following the example of as we continue to grapple with working between Black and Native studies. Plus, the bibliography is really great and I have a lot more to read now!
Tiffany Lethabo King deeply engages the space at which Black Studies and Indigenous Studies meet--that is the crossroads of colonialism, genocide and slavery where enlightenment era constructions of the human render indigenous and Black folks as non-human entities: property, land to be conquered, a frontier of bodies and territory. She finds there, the pockets where Black and Indigenous organizing, erotics, and creative production meet to challenge Western civilization--the critical edge of the fields.