The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture
In revealing the source of the ideology of whiteness in the imagination, Cassuto turns to images of blackness in American literature and culture from 1622 to 1865, examining such texts as Swallow Barn, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Typee, and Moby Dick.
Reconstructs a dialogue between objectifiers (American Puritans, slaveowners) and objectifieds (Native Americans, slaves) by arguing that the literature of race in antebellum America is the continuing story of an encounter with the grotesque. The focus is on literature-from Puritan captivity accounts, fugitive slave narratives, and proslavery fiction to the work of Melville, Stowe, Douglass, and their contemporaries. But Cassuto also ranges from colonial prodigies to nineteenth-century freak shows and Sambo stereotyping, from horror movies to the Holocaust Museum.