The Labors of Resurrection

In this book, Shatema Threadcraft argues that "spectacular" death--experienced publicly and violently--has given rise to global political movements, but it has also had an important gendered effect. Though Black women face a crisis of premature death, their deaths most often occur in private when most large-scale Black political mobilization centers around spectacular deaths. Profiling the resurrective political work of Ida B. Wells and others, Threadcraft highlights how the centrality of spectacular death has functioned to marginalize Black women in the stories of Black peoplehood. In so doing, she looks at the challenge that contemporary feminist activists face in attempting to make violence against Black women visible.