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

Author/creator Curseen, Allison S. author.
Format Book
PublicationChapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2026]
Description240 pages ; 24 cm
Subjects
African American girls in literature.
American literature--African American authors. --History and criticism.
American literature--Women authors. --History and criticism.
American literature--19th century. --History and criticism.
Ecrits de femmes noirs am ericains--Histoire et critique.
Litt erature am ericaine--19e si ecle. --Histoire et critique.

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?
Abstract "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.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in other formebook version : 9781469694238
LCCN2025045073
ISBN9781469694191
ISBN1469694190
ISBN9781469694207 (paperback)
ISBN1469694204
ISBN(epub)
ISBN(pdf)
ISBNPDF ebook
Standard identifier# CIPO000367031