Research Catalog

Title

Bodyminds reimagined : (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women's speculative fiction / Sami Schalk.

Author

Schalk, Samantha Dawn

Publication

• Durham ; London : Duke University Press, [2018]
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 180 pages; 24 cm

Summary

Traces how black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds - the intertwinement of the mental and the physical - in the context of race, gender and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory and disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations. She reads (dis)ability in neo-slave narratives by Octavia Butler ("Kindred") and Phyllis Alesia Perry ("Stigmata") not only as representing the literal injuries suffered under slavery, but also as a metaphor for the legacy of racial violence. The fantasy worlds in works by N.K. Jemisin, Shawntelle Madison, and Nalo Hopkinson - where werewolves have obsessive-compulsive disorder and blind demons can see magic - destabilize social categories and definitions of the human, calling into question the very nature of identity. In these texts, as well as in Butler's "Parable" series, able-mindedness and able-bodiedness are socially constructed and upheld through racial and gendered norms. Outlining (dis)ability's centrality to speculative fiction, Schalk shows how these works open up new social possibilities while changing conceptualizations of identity and oppression through nonrealist contexts.

Alternative Title

Body minds reimagined : disability, race, and gender in black women's speculative fiction

Subject

• 1900-1999
• American literature > African American authors > History and criticism
• Speculative fiction > 20th century > Women authors > History and criticism
• People with disabilities in literature
• Race in literature
• Gender identity in literature
• American literature > African American authors

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-174) and index.

Contents

Metaphor and materiality: disability and neo-slave narratives -- Whose reality is it anyway? deconstructing able-mindedness -- The future of bodyminds, bodyminds of the future -- Defamiliarizing (dis)ability, race, gender, and sexuality.

Call Number

Sc E 18-877

ISBN

• 9780822370734
• 0822370735
• 9780822370888
• 0822370883
• 9780822371830 (ebook) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

• 2017036970
• 99976217917

OCLC

985689502

Author

Schalk, Samantha Dawn, author.

Title

Bodyminds reimagined : (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women's speculative fiction / Sami Schalk.

Publisher

Durham ; London : Duke University Press, [2018]

Copyright Date

©2018

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-174) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Local Subject

Black author.

Other Standard Identifier

99976217917

Research Call Number

Sc E 18-877