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In Inhabitants of the Deep, Jonathan Howard undertakes a black ecocritical study of the deep in African American literature. Howard contends that the deep—a geographic formation that includes oceans, rivers, lakes, and the notion of depth itself—provides the diffuse subtext of black literary and expressive culture. He draws on texts by authors ranging from Olaudah Equiano and Herman Melville to Otis Redding and August Wilson to present a vision of blackness as an ongoing inhabitation of the deep that originates with and persists beyond Middle Passage. From captive Africans’ first tentative encounter with the landless realm of the Atlantic to the ground on which black peoples still struggle to stand, the deep is what blackness has known throughout the changing same of black life and death. Yet this radical exclusion from the superficial Western world, Howard contends, is more fully apprehended not as the social death hailed by the slave ship but as the black ecological life hailed by a blue planet.
Price: $34.00
Pages: 352
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Series: Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study
Publication Date:
11 November 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478032618
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“Jonathan Howard’s Inhabitants of the Deep is a brilliant, rigorous, and sophisticated account of Black life. At the crossroads of ecopoetics, social history, and cultural criticism, Howard explores how the waterways of history provide fertile ground for understanding Black life not as social death but rather as deep living. While offering new critical terms and deeply engaging with contemporary critical theory, this book is a wholly unique yet also deeply grounded intellectual intervention.”—Imani Perry, author of, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
“Where to begin with blackness? Why not the deep, the grave indeterminate poetic of water? So it is that Howard argues genesis and origin(s), turning to aquatic sightings and citings, reckoning with trace and longing and errancy and errantry. In doing this, he animates literariness through the ecologies water makes possible. Here,deep modifies study, voice, imagination; here, in this book, are some fugitive provocations—what a ride it is to think with them.”—Kevin Quashie, author of, Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
"Inhabitants of the Deep is rich in luminous and . . . deep thought. . . . [It] deserves widely to be read."—William Brown, Ethnic and Racial Studies
"This is a thought-provoking study of African American literature and history as they relate to the symbolism of water. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."—B. Taylor-Thompson, Choice
“Where to begin with blackness? Why not the deep, the grave indeterminate poetic of water? So it is that Howard argues genesis and origin(s), turning to aquatic sightings and citings, reckoning with trace and longing and errancy and errantry. In doing this, he animates literariness through the ecologies water makes possible. Here,deep modifies study, voice, imagination; here, in this book, are some fugitive provocations—what a ride it is to think with them.”—Kevin Quashie, author of, Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
"Inhabitants of the Deep is rich in luminous and . . . deep thought. . . . [It] deserves widely to be read."—William Brown, Ethnic and Racial Studies
"This is a thought-provoking study of African American literature and history as they relate to the symbolism of water. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."—B. Taylor-Thompson, Choice
Jonathan Howard is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Yale University.
Prologue. The Blueness of Blackness xi
Introduction. The Deep 1
1. Deep Humanities 31
2. Deep Study 75
3. Deep Voice 117
4. Deep Imagination 139
5. Deep Life 167
6. Deep Vision 195
Epilogue. Ankle Deep 259
Acknowledgments. Deep Gratitude 265
Notes 269
Bibliography 299
Index 309
Introduction. The Deep 1
1. Deep Humanities 31
2. Deep Study 75
3. Deep Voice 117
4. Deep Imagination 139
5. Deep Life 167
6. Deep Vision 195
Epilogue. Ankle Deep 259
Acknowledgments. Deep Gratitude 265
Notes 269
Bibliography 299
Index 309