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A review by thelonia
Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross
4.0
There are few things that can grab the attention like a disembodied torso, although when reading the title, your first thought may in fact be “Who’s Hannah Mary Tabbs?”
The answer: a woman whose story was muddled, complex, and complicated by the appearance of several body parts, most notably the torso. The racially ambiguous (and yet, by some descriptions, racially identifiable) titular torso was found by a pond outside of Philadelphia in 1887, and police would use ground-breaking techniques and old-fashioned racism to bring the killer(s) to justice.
Gross manages to take what could be your run of the mill crime story and makes it an exploration of race and gender in the United States, all centered around a gruesome affair and the mysterious woman at the heart of it all.
While the pitch for the novel may seem more like the Bendis/Andreyko historical graphic novel than a captivating read about injustice in America, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is a great blend of both crime thriller and historical non-fiction that I’d heartily recommend (given you have the stomach for its occasional gory description).
The answer: a woman whose story was muddled, complex, and complicated by the appearance of several body parts, most notably the torso. The racially ambiguous (and yet, by some descriptions, racially identifiable) titular torso was found by a pond outside of Philadelphia in 1887, and police would use ground-breaking techniques and old-fashioned racism to bring the killer(s) to justice.
Gross manages to take what could be your run of the mill crime story and makes it an exploration of race and gender in the United States, all centered around a gruesome affair and the mysterious woman at the heart of it all.
While the pitch for the novel may seem more like the Bendis/Andreyko historical graphic novel than a captivating read about injustice in America, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is a great blend of both crime thriller and historical non-fiction that I’d heartily recommend (given you have the stomach for its occasional gory description).