In this compelling new study, Debra Walker King considers fragments of experience recorded in oral histories and newspapers as well as those produced in twentieth-century novels, films, and television that reveal how the black body in pain functions as a rhetorical device and as political strategy. King's primary hypothesis is that, in the United States, black experience of the body in pain is as much a construction of social, ethical, and economic politics as it is a physiological phenomenon.

As an essential element defining black experience in America, pain plays many roles. It is used to promote racial stereotypes, increase the sale of movies and other pop culture products, and encourage advocacy for various social causes. Pain is employed as a tool of resistance against racism, but it also functions as a sign of racism's insidious ability to exert power over and maintain control of those it claims--regardless of race. With these dichotomous uses of pain in mind, King considers and questions the effects of the manipulation of an unspoken but long-standing belief that pain, suffering, and the hope for freedom and communal subsistence will merge to uplift those who are oppressed, especially during periods of social and political upheaval. This belief has become a ritualized philosophy fueling the multiple constructions of black bodies in pain, a belief that has even come to function as an identity and community stabilizer.

In her attempt to interpret the constant manipulation and abuse of this philosophy, King explores the redemptive and visionary power of pain as perceived historically in black culture, the aesthetic value of black pain as presented in a variety of cultural artifacts, and the socioeconomic politics of suffering surrounding the experiences and representations of blacks in the United States. The book introduces the term Blackpain, defining it as a tool of national mythmaking and as a source of cultural and symbolic capital that normalizes individual suffering until the individual--the real person--disappears. Ultimately, the book investigates America's love-hate relationship with black bodies in pain.

The process of naming is a transformative act that inherently imparts meaning, whether it be through the conscious use of a familiar historical or allegorical appellation or through the creation of a new word. Critics have often noted the importance of names and naming in African-American literature, but Debra Walker King's Deep Talk is the first methodological discussion of the process. In this original study, the author seeks out the discourses existing beneath the primary narratives of these literary texts by interpreting the significance of certain character names.

King explores what she calls the "metatext" of names, an interpretive realm where these chosen words offer up symbolic, metaphoric, and other meanings, often simultaneously. Literary names can thus revise and comment upon the surface action of a novel by giving voice to unspoken themes and events, a process known as "deep talk." Drawing on the work of Kristeva, Bakhtin, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the author explains the interpretive guidelines necessary to read "deep talk" in African-American texts. She applies these guidelines to texts by Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker, among others.

Perhaps most important, King reveals how the process of naming became a form of empowerment for African Americans, a way of both reclaiming black identity and resisting conventions of white society. Black men and women whose ancestors were stripped of their identity through the Middle Passage and during slavery embraced the incantatory power of names and have long used this power to defend themselves from the effects of racism, sexism, and classism.

The process of naming is a transformative act that inherently imparts meaning, whether it be through the conscious use of a familiar historical or allegorical appellation or through the creation of a new word. Critics have often noted the importance of names and naming in African-American literature, but Debra Walker King's Deep Talk is the first methodological discussion of the process. In this original study, the author seeks out the discourses existing beneath the primary narratives of these literary texts by interpreting the significance of certain character names.

King explores what she calls the "metatext" of names, an interpretive realm where these chosen words offer up symbolic, metaphoric, and other meanings, often simultaneously. Literary names can thus revise and comment upon the surface action of a novel by giving voice to unspoken themes and events, a process known as "deep talk." Drawing on the work of Kristeva, Bakhtin, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the author explains the interpretive guidelines necessary to read "deep talk" in African-American texts. She applies these guidelines to texts by Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker, among others.

Perhaps most important, King reveals how the process of naming became a form of empowerment for African Americans, a way of both reclaiming black identity and resisting conventions of white society. Black men and women whose ancestors were stripped of their identity through the Middle Passage and during slavery embraced the incantatory power of names and have long used this power to defend themselves from the effects of racism, sexism, and classism.