Minor moves : Black girls and unruly performance in antebellum narratives / Allison S. Curseen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Curseen, Allison S., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Other Title:

Black girls and unruly performance in antebellum narratives

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2026]

Summary:

"Scholars and critics have long understood the writing of nineteenth-century Black women as critiquing the figure of Topsy--an enslaved girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Many interpret the works of authors such as Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, and Hannah Crafts as rejecting Topsy and providing their own corrective representations of Black girls. Through close readings, Allison S. Curseen revisits some of these works to argue otherwise. Instead, she contends that Black girls' physical movements emerge in their narratives not as rejections but as critical reenactments of Topsy. Minor Moves draws on performance studies, literary studies, and childhood studies to offer provocative and incisive readings of Black girls' movements in nineteenth-century US literature. Curseen challenges readers to pay attention to 'minor' movements that appear fleeting, inconsequential, and easy to overlook. Attending to these movements, Curseen argues, is urgent to the project of imagining Black girl life amid the anti-Blackness embedded in American culture. These movements reveal modes of being that work to elude dominant structures and gesture to the abundance of Black life: to growing bodies, fugitive Black female desires, queer geographies, and unruly, childish plotting"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Meeting Topsy

As if "I Was Here": Archiving Incidental Black Girl Movement in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The Minor's "Infantile Pranks": Considering the Choreography and Poetics of Black Girl Movement in Harriet Wilson's Our Nig

As Told by Lilly (Lizzy [and Hannah]): Plotting the Black Commons and Uncommon Female Desires in Hannah Crafts's The Bondswoman's Narrative

The Movement of Stowe's Domestic Ballet: Or, Reading Topsy "in Her Turn"

Coda: Mama's Baby: Maybe A Different Social Subject?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on June 9, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Curseen, Allison S. Minor moves.

ISBN:

9781469694238

1469694239

OCLC:

1585502088

Publisher Number:

CIPO000367032

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license