Will I love In the Wake?

This is the most moving “academic” book I’ve ever read, and really that’s because it blends academic subjects like cultural studies with more personal, memoir-type writing about being a Black woman in the 21st century.

In the Wake is concerned with more than just death, of course, but death looms large throughout the book, as it has in all of Black life throughout American history. Indeed, the first sentence is “I wasn’t there when my sister died,” and over the course of the book we bear witness to many other deaths that have affected the author as well.

Over time,… show more.

When I talk about my book, one of the questions I get is whether getting fixated on the past keeps us from moving forward. On this, I have to immediately look to Christina Sharpe’s transformative work and her concept of the wake. 

Sharpe shows how the afterlives of slavery live on in the wake behind the ship, the contemporary lives of Black Americans and a society that is built on their subjugation.

This was a guiding concept as I wrote about how the past follows us, a haunting that shapes our lives, whether we see it or not.