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Drawing on a rich tapestry of historical analysis, literary criticism, and cultural theory, Hazel Carby interrogates how racial fictions have been constructed, maintained, and weaponized across centuries to justify systems of domination and exploitation.
Traversing global geographies and temporalities, Racial Fictions reveals the interconnectedness of America's domestic racial struggles with international colonial ambitions. Carby examines the ideological underpinnings of racial hierarchies, the afterlife of slavery, and the ongoing impact of settler colonialism. The book critically engages with the works of key Black intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter, situating them within a broader narrative of resistance and survival.
Carby challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about the persistence of white supremacy, the violence embedded in historical memory, and the silencing of marginalized voices. The result is a profound exploration of the intricate and enduring legacies of race, imperialism, and violence in the formation of modern identities and nation-states.
About the author
Hazel V. Carby is the author of Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist, Cultures in Babylon: Feminism from Black Britain to African America, and Race Men. She is Emeritus Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Her memoir Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2019 and won the British Academy's Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding in 2020.
