Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts

Through a cultural study of writings about slavery in the United States, Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts uncovers a mode of behavior adopted by African Americans for relief from the brutality of black bondage. Roland Leander Williams grants that African Americans have been beaten, but he guarantees that they have not been broken. While he acknowledges that they have been demeaned, he assures that they have not been diminished. Williams confesses that African Americans have been done harm, but he confirms that they have not become disheartened. Close readings of classic slave narratives, along with some neo-slave narratives-including The Conjure Woman (1899), Kindred (1979), Dessa Rose (1986), and The Good Lord Bird (2013)-furnish proof that African Americans have preserved their dignity and elevated their status through ingenious applications of improvisation. Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts establishes as well that a dim view of African Americans, propagated by black bondage, bears a resemblance to sexual discrimination, which prompts female targets of its gaze to practice dissembling.

Author: Roland Leander Williams
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 07/01/2022
Pages: 190
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9781438489476
ISBN10: 1438489471
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American | African American & Black
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- Social Science | Slavery

About the Author
Roland Leander Williams is Chair and Professor of English at Temple University. He is the author of Black Male Frames: African Americans in a Century of Hollywood Cinema, 1903-2003 and African American Autobiography and the Quest for Freedom.

This title is not returnable