“A mountain full of ghosts”: Mourning African American Masculinities in Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days

This article discusses how Colson Whitehead’s novel, John Henry Days, questions the accuracy of the portrayal of African American masculinities within a dominant white historiography. It reads the festival portrayed in John Henry Days as a concerted effort to disguise and disrupt any sincere attempts at exposing the realities of working-class African American life in the (post)Reconstruction South. Likewise, the article questions to what extent the contemporary social realities portrayed in the novel allow for a sincere attempt to remember and mourn those working-class African American men who died for the industrial progress celebrated during the novel’s festival, the John Henry Days.