In the Wake
Book description
In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"-the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness-Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are…
Why read it?
2 authors picked In the Wake as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This is the most moving “academic” book I’ve ever read, and really that’s because it blends academic subjects like cultural studies with more personal, memoir-type writing about being a Black woman in the 21st century.
In the Wake is concerned with more than just death, of course, but death looms large throughout the book, as it has in all of Black life throughout American history. Indeed, the first sentence is “I wasn’t there when my sister died,” and over the course of the book we bear witness to many other deaths that have affected the author as well.
Over time,…
From Timothy's list on changing your thinking about death and dying.
When I talk about my book, one of the questions I get is whether getting fixated on the past keeps us from moving forward. On this, I have to immediately look to Christina Sharpe’s transformative work and her concept of the wake.
Sharpe shows how the afterlives of slavery live on in the wake behind the ship, the contemporary lives of Black Americans and a society that is built on their subjugation.
This was a guiding concept as I wrote about how the past follows us, a haunting that shapes our lives, whether we see it or not.
From Hajar's list on understanding revisionist history politics.
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