It is telling that Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, a monograph that so blatantly defies ethnographic convention, opens on an airplane en route to the Holy Land. As John Jackson later details, the classical anthropological trope of the “arrival scene” is an authenticating gesture, but one that finds little purchase […]
Petal Samuel reviews Tsitsi Jaji’ s book Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity
Tsitsi Jaji’s elegant study opens with an anecdote at once personal and emblematic: her interlinked memories of celebrations of Zimbabwe’s independence and the broadcasting of Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier” on the radio. By examining such instances of black diasporic music’s circulation in continental Africa, Africa in Stereo demonstrates the role of music as a site […]
Kaneesha Parsad reviews Salamishah Tillet’s book Sites of Slavery
Salamishah Tillet’s Sites of Slavery examines the ways in which post-Civil Rights African American writers and artists return “to the site of slavery” (Tillet 2) in order to grapple with the ongoing exclusion of African Americans from full citizenship and to pose racial futures. Tillet analyzes diverse texts, ranging from legal documents to plays and films. All share what […]