Description
Book SynopsisLegal Fictions is a bold declaration that, in the U.S., the black body is thoroughly bound by law. It is an unflinchingly look at the implications of that claim and a virtuoso survey of the ways that black authors of literary fiction have engaged with the law's constructions of race since the era of slavery.
Trade Review"Holloway has written a sterling account of the convergence of literary and legal narratives in constructing American racial identities . . . This book will engage scholars in African American studies and American studies in the coming years." -- D. E. Magill * Choice *
“Holloway's writing is elegantly structured and multifaceted; the analytical language she uses is bright with imagery.” -- Jo Manby * Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World *
“Karla FC Holloway’s most recent book is a remarkable creative and critical work that pushes the boundaries of interdisciplinarity in law, literature, history, and critical race theory. … Holloway uses the marginality of black literature as an argument for its central role in the legal and literary construction of nation and nationality. Finding the margins at the center and the center in the margins is precisely the kind of appealing paradox that makes this book so powerful.” -- Dan Farbman * Law, Culture, and the Humanities *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Introduction: Bound by Law 1
Intimate Intersectionalities—Scalar Reflections 5
Public Fictions, Private Facts 9
Simile as Precedent 13
Property, Contract, and Evidentiary Values 17
1. The Claims of Property: On Being and Belonging 23
The Capital in Question 27
Imagined Liberalism 35
Mapping Racial Reason 41
Being in Place: Landscape, Never Inscape 49
2. Bodies as Evidence (of Things Not Seen) 55
Secondhand Tales and Hearsay 59
Black Legibility—Can I Get a Witness? 72
Trying to Read Me 77
3. Composing Contract 89
"A novel-like tenor" 93
Passing and Protection 96
A Secluded Colored Neighborhood 102
Epilogue. When and Where "All the Dark-Glass Boys" Enter 111
A Contagion of Madness 113
Notes 127
References 139
Acknowledgments 145
Index 147
