New Books In African American Studies

You may know Toni Morrison’s famed novel Beloved, but do you know much about the true story of the woman depicted in that story? You will know about the real story and more, by reading her biography called Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2016) authored by Howard University Professor of History and Department Chair Nikki Taylor. Driven Toward Madness tells the story of how fugitive slave Margaret Garner and her family escaped to free Ohio in late January 1856, only to be captured in a cabin outside of Cincinnati. What happened as the Garner family were being apprehended is the climax of the story; Taylor shows what drove Margaret’s attempt to kill all four of her children, while only successfully doing so by way of decapitating her two year-old daughter Mary. Based in history, Taylor uses various theoretical frameworks like trauma studies, pain studies, black feminist theory, and literary criticism to broaden our understandings of the w