Veranstaltung:
English Seminar, Room 11
Tidal Memories in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing: Saltwater Slavery, the Carceral Continuum, and Stories Against the Wake
The African diaspora in the Americas was defined by the relentless rhythm of saltwater in the form of the perpetual arrival of new slave ships holding African captives as human commodities. In this sense, the African diaspora was coined by the serial repetition of the Middle Passage in the wake of saltwater slavery. In Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, the residue of saltwater slavery most prominently materializes in the form of Parchman, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, which is an instance of the carceral continuum from the past in the form of the hold of the ship during the Middle passage to the present in the form of the prison industrial complex. While the Stone family’s experience with saltwater slavery goes all the way back to the Middle Passage and representatives of all the three generations alive in the novel’s present are affected by Parchman and the carceral continuum, protagonist Jojo’s grandparents resist the wake by making the past productive for the present. Whereas River, Jojo’s grandfather, draws on his memories of the past to tell stories against the wake, Jojo’s grandmother Philomène relies on her Yoruba origins, which allows her to reverse the Middle Passage that she is reliving in the light of her death.
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