{"id":20432,"date":"2012-02-07T02:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T02:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20432"},"modified":"2015-11-08T15:10:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T15:10:12","slug":"the-souls-of-mixed-folk-review-samatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20432","title":{"rendered":"The Souls of Mixed Folk [Review: Samatar]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/sofiasamatar.blogspot.com\/2012\/02\/souls-of-mixed-folk.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Souls of Mixed Folk [Review: Samatar]<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sofiasamatar.blogspot.com\" target=\"_blank\">Sofia Samatar<\/a><br \/>\n2012-02-05<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/14136994013703108164\" target=\"_blank\">Sofia Samatar<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=9628\" target=\"_blank\">This book<\/a>, by Stanford professor <a href=\"https:\/\/english.stanford.edu\/people\/michele-elam\" target=\"_blank\">Michele Elam<\/a>, comes at you with a provocative title and a provocative cover.<\/p>\n<p>The title, a reference to the brilliant and still relevant 1903 book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43806\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Souls of Black Folk<\/em><\/a>, by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/W._E._B._Du_Bois\" target=\"_blank\">W.E.B. Du Bois<\/a>, is provocative because it could be read as trivializing a classic of African-American literature and cultural theory. The cover, which shows an image of &#8220;Baby Halfie Brown Head&#8221; by artist Lezley Saar, is provocative because of the way it presents a mixed-race body as a creepy, freakish-looking doll.<\/p>\n<p>If you are bothered by these things, you should keep reading Elam&#8217;s book. She explains very quickly that she doesn&#8217;t mean to trivialize Du Bois: her title comes from a frame in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creekification.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nate Creekmore&#8217;s<\/a> comic strip, <em>Maintaining<\/em>, and she chose it for a number of good reasons, among them a wish &#8220;to both evoke and unsettle expectations, to prepare the reader for examples of art, literature, comics, and drama that collectively reframe&#8230;conversations about the &#8216;spiritual strivings&#8217; of mixed race people.&#8221; The disturbing doll on the cover is meant to play a similar role. Elam writes: &#8220;Politically incorrect in an age seeking to answer ever more earnestly the philosophical and democratic problem of &#8216;the one and the many,&#8217; its body will not deliver the desired whole.&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire review <a href=\"http:\/\/sofiasamatar.blogspot.com\/2012\/02\/souls-of-mixed-folk.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Souls of Mixed Folk [Review: Samatar] Sofia Samatar 2012-02-05 Sofia Samatar This book, by Stanford professor Michele Elam, comes at you with a provocative title and a provocative cover. The title, a reference to the brilliant and still relevant 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois, is provocative because it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,20],"tags":[1386,9554],"class_list":["post-20432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-michele-elam","tag-sofia-samatar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43817,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20432\/revisions\/43817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}