Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post–Civil Rights Imagination

Sites of Slavery by Salamishah Tillet is a groundbreaking exploration of how contemporary African American artists and intellectuals are reconstructing "sites of slavery" in order to understand and challenge the ongoing exclusion of African Americans from the founding narratives of the United States.

Through a meticulous examination of contested figures, events, memories, locations, and experiences related to chattel slavery, Tillet provides a powerful critique of the civic myth of the United States as the land of equal opportunity and justice for all.

By claiming and recasting these sites of slavery, contemporary artists and intellectuals provide slaves with an interiority and subjectivity denied them in American history, register the civic estrangement experienced by African Americans in the post–civil rights era, and envision a more fully realized American democracy.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the ongoing struggle for racial justice in America and the ways in which art can be used to challenge and transform dominant narratives of history.