Birth of a Nation'hood

by MORRISON, TONI

• ISBN13: 9780679758938
• ISBN10: 0679758933
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1997-02-04
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

Co-edited and introduced by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,Birth of a Nation'hoodelucidates as never before the grim miasma of the O.J. Simpson case, which has elicited gargantuan fascination. As they pertain to the scandal, the issues of race, sex, violence, money, and the media are refracted through twelve powerful essays that have been written especially for this book by distinguished intellectuals--black and white, male and female. Together these keen analyses of a defining American moment cast a chilling gaze on the script and spectacle of the insidious tensions that rend our society, even as they ponder the proper historical, cultural, political, legal, psychological, and linguistic ramifications of the affair. With contributions by: Toni Morrison, George Lipsitz, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., with Aderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh, Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Ishmael Reed, Leola Johnson and David Roediger, Andrew Ross, Patricia J. Williams, Ann duCille, Armond White, Claudia Brodsky Lacour

Author Biography

TONI MORRISON is the author of ten novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to A Mercy (2008). She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in New York.

With contributions by:
Toni Morrison
George Lipsitz
A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., with Aderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh
Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Ishmael Reed
Leola Johnson and David Roediger
Andrew Ross
Patricia J. Williams
Ann duCille
Armond White
Claudia Brodsky Lacour

Table of Contents

The Official Story: Dead Man Golfing	vii
Introduction
Toni Morrison
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: Marketing and the O.J. Simpson Trial	3	(28)
George Lipsitz
The O.J. Simpson Trial: Who Was Improperly "Playing the Race Card"?	31	(26)
A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.
Aderson Bellegarde Francois
Linda Y. Yueh
Dismissed or Banished? A Testament to the Reasonableness of the Simpson Jury	57	(40)
Nikol G. Alexander
Drucilla Cornell
Color-blind Dreams and Racial Nightmares: Reconfiguring Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era	97	(72)
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw
Bigger and O.J.	169	(28)
Ishmael Reed
"Hertz, Don't It?" Becoming Colorless and Staying Black in the Crossover of O.J. Simpson	197	(44)
Leola Johnson
David Roediger
If the Genes Fit, How Do You Acquit? O.J. and Science	241	(32)
Andrew Ross
American Kabuki	273	(20)
Patricia J. Williams
The Unbearable Darkness of Being: "Fresh' Thoughts on Race, Sex, and the Simpsons	293	(46)
Ann duCille
Eye, the Jury	339	(28)
Armond White
The "Interest" of the Simpson Trial: Spectacle, National History, and the Notion of Disinterested Judgment	367	(47)
Claudia Brodsky Lacour
About the Contributors	414