Tiffany Lethabo King

This was just a powerful way of bringing together Black and Native studies, and using especially the the conquistador-settler as a new lens through which to understand the extreme violence that was involved in the settlement of the north American continent, not just ideologically but also in action. King uses the work of Sylvia Wynter a great deal to interrogate how the human is constructed in the spaces she writes about, as well as Afro-pessimist thought, but she manages to make the former very clear and use the latter to push for a different kind of futurity, especially by taking up C. Riley Snorton's use of fungibility and fugitivity to create spaces for Black people to thrive, rather than having the non-human or fungibility be a stopping point.

My favorite chapter was probably "Our Cherokee Uncles: Black and Native Erotics," which manages to highlight the intimacies possible between Black and Native people, and what that means for "alliances," the futures of both people, and move through and with the sticking points that usually crop up in the conflict between Black and Native studies.

It's just such a good book, and I'm hopeful that people will be citing it a ton in the future and following the example of as we continue to grapple with working between Black and Native studies. Plus, the bibliography is really great and I have a lot more to read now!… (mehr)