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In See Justice Done: The Problem of Law in the African American
Literary Tradition, author Christopher Brown argues that African
American literature has profound and deliberate legal roots.
Tracing this throughline from the eighteenth century to the
present, Brown demonstrates that engaging with legal culture in its
many forms—including its conventions, paradoxes, and
contradictions—is paramount to understanding Black writing. Brown
begins by examining petitions submitted by free and enslaved Blacks
to colonial and early republic legislatures. A virtually unexplored
archive, these petitions aimed to demonstrate the autonomy and
competence of their authors. Brown also examines early slave
autobiographies such as Equiano’s Interesting Narrative and Mary
Prince’s History, which were both written in the form of legal
petitions. These works invoke scenes of black competence and of
black madness, repeatedly and simultaneously. Early Black writings
reflect how a Black Atlantic world, organized by slavery, refused
to acknowledge Black competence. By including scenes of black
madness, these narratives critique the violence of the law and
predict the failure of future legal counterparts, such as Plessy v.
Ferguson, to remedy injustice. Later chapters examine the works of
more contemporary writers, such as Sutton E. Griggs, George
Schuyler, Toni Morrison, and Edward P. Jones, and explore varied
topics from American exceptionalism to the legal trope of
"colorblindness." In chronicling these interactions with
jurisprudential logics, See Justice Done reveals the tensions
between US law and Black experiences of both its possibilities and
its perils.
In See Justice Done: The Problem of Law in the African American
Literary Tradition, author Christopher Brown argues that African
American literature has profound and deliberate legal roots.
Tracing this throughline from the eighteenth century to the
present, Brown demonstrates that engaging with legal culture in its
many forms—including its conventions, paradoxes, and
contradictions—is paramount to understanding Black writing. Brown
begins by examining petitions submitted by free and enslaved Blacks
to colonial and early republic legislatures. A virtually unexplored
archive, these petitions aimed to demonstrate the autonomy and
competence of their authors. Brown also examines early slave
autobiographies such as Equiano’s Interesting Narrative and Mary
Prince’s History, which were both written in the form of legal
petitions. These works invoke scenes of black competence and of
black madness, repeatedly and simultaneously. Early Black writings
reflect how a Black Atlantic world, organized by slavery, refused
to acknowledge Black competence. By including scenes of black
madness, these narratives critique the violence of the law and
predict the failure of future legal counterparts, such as Plessy v.
Ferguson, to remedy injustice. Later chapters examine the works of
more contemporary writers, such as Sutton E. Griggs, George
Schuyler, Toni Morrison, and Edward P. Jones, and explore varied
topics from American exceptionalism to the legal trope of
"colorblindness." In chronicling these interactions with
jurisprudential logics, See Justice Done reveals the tensions
between US law and Black experiences of both its possibilities and
its perils.
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