The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown
Martha Cutter
Jun 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Karen Malina White
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16 hr 39 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
On March 23, 1849, Henry Brown climbed into a large wooden postal crate and was mailed from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, to freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "Box Brown," as he came to be known after this astounding feat, went on to carve out a career as an abolitionist speaker, actor, magician, hypnotist, and even faith healer. The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown is the first book to show how subversive performances were woven into Brown's entire life, from his early days practicing magic in Virginia while enslaved, to his last shows in Canada and England in the 1890s. It recovers forgotten elements of Brown's history to illustrate the ways he made himself a spectacle on abolitionist lecture circuits via outlandish performances, and then fell off these circuits and went on to reinvent himself again and again. In this study, Martha J. Cutter analyzes contemporary resurrections of Brown's persona by leading poets, writers, and visual artists. Both in Brown's time and in ours, stories were created, invented, and embellished about Brown, continuing to recreate his intriguing, albeit fragmentary and elusive, story. The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown fosters a new understanding not only of Brown's life but of modern Black performance art that provocatively dramatizes the unfinished work of African American freedom.
About the author
Martha J. Cutter is professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of The Illustrated Slave, Lost and Found in Translation, and Unruly Tongue, and coeditor of Redrawing the Historical Past.
Emmy-nominated actress Karen Malina White is most known for her work in the film Lean on Me and for her television roles on The Cosby Show, A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and the voice of "Dijonay" on The Proud Family. An accomplished narrator and voice-over artist, Karen won an Audie Award in 2023.
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