“In a kaleidoscopic visual experience that invites contemplation from every angle, In Slavery’s Wake probes deep histories, rich cultures, and persistent spiritualities across a vast terrestrial and aquatic map. Vividly readable and endlessly teachable, this unique collection of many voices and varied genres thrums with life and the vibrant memory of Black freedom-seekers around the globe, offering a bold and essential look at slavery and its ongoing legacies.” —Tiya Miles, author of the National Book Award-winning All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
“In the turbulence that flows from human suffering, people come together to reckon with their losses and draw lessons for the future.
In Slavery’s Wake reveals how the devastating history of human bondage continues to inundate the societies it produced. These brave and inspired artists and writers confront slavery and its legacies without flinching, just as many of their ancestors did, and as we all must do if we are ever to set a steady course toward a better world.”
—Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War
“In Slavery’s Wake bears witness to the telling of uncomfortable truths, which illuminate the lived experiences and historical memories of heretofore nameless, faceless, and storyless enslaved and colonized people and their descendants. It breaks the silence and unmasks the powerful urgency of Black folks’ ongoing practices of freedom and struggles to define liberation anew.” —Edda L. Fields-Black, author of COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War
“Drawing on years of research by historians, art historians, and archaeologists,
In Slavery’s Wake is the result of a decade-long collaboration among scholars and curators from the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Senegal, and several other countries. Featuring provocative essays richly illustrated with an array of photographs, paintings, engravings, and other images, this stunning book invites readers to visualize the past associated with the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in order to reconsider the present and reimagine the future of the African Diaspora.” —Ana Lucia Araujo, author of Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery
“This companion volume to the international multilingual exhibition
In Slavery’s Wake centers racial oppression and people’s resistance, creativity, and survival through five centuries. This point-counterpoint is captured exquisitely through essays, poems, and a playlist in riveting prose accompanied by scores of beautiful, as well as horrific, images of enslavement and resistance, colonialism and independence, to show freedom’s unfinished condition. If you do not learn, then you are a closed book. If you do not weep, then you are made of stone. If you do not shout for joy, then your humanity is compromised. The spirit that drives it all is an engaged moral imperative that demands the past help shape a better, more equitable, future. Brilliant, stunning, and urgent.” —J. R. Kerr-Ritchie, author of Rebellious Passage: The Creole Revolt and America’s Coastal Slave Trade
About the Author
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. PAUL GARDULLO is a historian and curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and director of its Center for the Study of Global Slavery. JOHANNA OBENDA is a curatorial specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture who explores stories of the varied African diasporic experience through the lens of art, history, and culture. ANTHONY BOGUES is Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of numerous books, including Black Heretics, Black Prophets.
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