Description: Lindsey Stewart wades into unease about how Black southern joy is portrayed by analyzing work by Zora Neale Hurston. Stewart theorizes the politics of joy, a refusal of the neo-abolitionism that would reduce southern Black life to tragedy or social death.
Review Quotes: "The Politics of Black Joy cracks open the complexities of southern Blackness by offering an intriguing and underutilized approach--Black joy--to address how the South sits at the crux of racial performance, agency, and gender. At the center of Lindsey Stewart's theorization is Zora Neale Hurston, a southern literary and cultural icon whose genius is revisited every generation. Stewart not only demonstrates a mastery of scholarship about Hurston's life and writing but also ties it together with her own analysis to create a work that refreshes criticism surrounding Hurston and her contemporaries to gain a better understanding of southern Black life and culture." --Regina N. Bradley, author of Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South