Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man

A prize-winning poet argues that blackness acts as the caesura between human and nonhuman, man and animal.

Throughout US history, black people have been configured as sociolegal nonpersons, a subgenre of the human. Being Property Once Myself delves into the literary imagination and ethical concerns that have emerged from this experience. Each chapter tracks a specific animal figure—the rat, the cock, the mule, the dog, and the shark—in the works of black authors such as Richard Wright, Toni ...