1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910810863803321

Autore

Mitchell Koritha

Titolo

Living with lynching : African American lynching plays, performance, and citizenship, 1890-1930 / / Koritha Mitchell

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Urbana, : University of Illinois Press, c2011

ISBN

1-283-58290-2

9786613895356

0-252-09352-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (271 p.)

Collana

The new black studies series

Disciplina

812/.509896073

Soggetti

American drama - African American authors - History and criticism

American drama - 20th century - History and criticism

American drama - 19th century - History and criticism

One-act plays, American - History and criticism

Lynching in literature

African Americans in literature

Violence in literature

Citizenship in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Making lynching drama and its contributions legible. Scenes and scenarios : reading aright -- Redefining "black theater" -- Developing a genre, asserting black citizenship. The black soldier : elevating community conversation -- The black lawyer : preserving testimony -- The black mother/wife : negotiating trauma -- The pimp and coward : offering gendered revisions.

Sommario/riassunto

'Living with Lynching' demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. Koritha Mitchell shows that African Americans performed and read the scripts in community settings to certify to each other that lynching victims were not the isolated brutes



that dominant discourses made them out to be. Instead, the play scripts often described victims as honourable heads of households being torn from model domestic units by white violence.