The Delectable Negro

Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence.

Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith's slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison's Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption.

Contains mature themes.

©2014 New York University (P)2022 Tantor

The obsessive obsession

The whites hates the GOLD hearted negro because honestly speaking it is the white race that is the real slaves to the negroid race-Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Things they don’t walk to talk about

Broad view and description of events and behaviors of those who enslaved, raped, and ate black people and used ways to keep the other blacks in line. This to me is part of the start of what some the elite have been doing now.

poetic language with solid historical & literally references

great historical references, interesting insights into aspects of history many would rather un-know after they learn about it. A great challenge for any student of history. My only criticism is that it can be a bit wordy in getting to the meat of any given point, there's a kind of literary aspect to it that might not be to everyones taste. I don't agree with every single extrapolation made but I champion the effort. You should consume this book.

Lots of new historical knowledge gained

Must read. New perspective on how people look at sexuality vs assault, and the fine lines between them. Also wonderful telling on social, economic, spiritual, sexual, emotional etc., cannibalism that occurred/ occurs towards black and brown bodies.

Disturbing

I found this to be a very difficult read. I was not ready for the information