Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright on Dissecting the White Negro, 1851
- Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright on Dissecting the White Negro, 1851
To strip from the flesh the specious skin; to weigh in the brainpan seeds of white
pepper; to find in the body its own diminishment— blood-deep and definite; to measure the heft
of lack; to make of the work of faith the work of science, evidence the word of God: Canaan
be the servant of servants; thus to know the truth of this: (this derelict
corpus, a dark compendium, this atavistic assemblage—flatter
feet, bowed legs, a shorter neck) so deep the tincture —see it!—
we still know white from not. [End Page 124]
Natasha Trethewey is author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and three collections of poetry, Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), and Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of NEA, Guggenheim, Bunting, and Rockefeller fellowships. At Emory University she is Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing. Her new book, Thrall, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012.
