Prof. Stacy Lettman Interviewed on Slave Sublime in BAR Book Forum

In the Black Agenda Report's Book Forum, authors answer five questions about their books. In the December 2022 interview, Roberto Sirvent asks Professor Stacy Lettman about her new book, The Slave Sublime The Language of Violence in Caribbean Literature and Music (University of North Carolina Press, June 2022).

An excerpt is below:

Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?

Stacy J. Lettman: The Slave Sublime: The Language of Violence in Caribbean Literature and Music speaks to the ongoing legacies of slavery and colonialism and the ways in which Black people not only continue to experience the slave plantation but also its related violence—yet have found ways to dispel this violence. What I refer to and codify as the slave sublime (drawing upon Paul Gilroy’s seminal term) is an articulation in literature and music of the violent legacies of Caribbean slavery as well as newer forms of bondage (the ghetto, prison, globalization, IMF debt servitude, etc.,) and the immeasurable levels of trauma that stem from the realization that plantation structures persevere despite the formal end of slavery and the advancement of the post-slavery periods and independence. The book moves across a range of disciplines and critical approaches to elucidate economic, textual, religious, musical, psychological, and linguistic legacies of violence and loss. In essence, the book prompts us to understand the ways in which modern-day political and economic arrangements are re-figurations of the plantation system that foreground the experiences of the ghetto, prison, madness, poverty, and unemployment. [ . . . ]

Read the full interview at Black Agenda Report's Book Forum and read more about The Slave Sublime The Language of Violence in Caribbean Literature and Music at the UNC Press book listing.