The Delectable Negro

Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture

By: Vincent Woodard, E. Patrick Johnson - foreword, Justin A. Joyce - editor, Dwight McBride - editor

Narrated by: Stan Brown

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence.

Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith's slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison's Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption.

Contains mature themes.

©2014 New York University (P)2022 Tantor

I knew it!

Brings forth the true meaning of "Trans" Atlantic & "Missionary" I'm disgusted by "Christianity" more and more every day.

painful, but needed

This book was very much hard to listen to, but just as much needed to be made.

Disturbing

I found this to be a very difficult read. I was not ready for the information

poetic language with solid historical & literally references

great historical references, interesting insights into aspects of history many would rather un-know after they learn about it. A great challenge for any student of history. My only criticism is that it can be a bit wordy in getting to the meat of any given point, there's a kind of literary aspect to it that might not be to everyones taste. I don't agree with every single extrapolation made but I champion the effort. You should consume this book.

One of the best books

Such an important book! I’m Mexican everything I know about Black peoples is what I watch on tv I grew up around white and Mexicans only my take away is that Black men have suffered the most still today

What stood out the most is the historical treachery of the slave master female that's often not talked about.

I love the pace of the narraration of the information in this book. I can't imagine what my people went through in slavery, the fear the humiliation, rape and torcher is one thing but to be spiritually and literally cannibalized is history that's not taught in schools

The Early Slave Owners were the savages!

I always knew slavery was horrible but this narrator told a story of absolute madness.

Necessary Reading

Get past the homoerotic references written about in this book to see that most of the narratives are about the deviant and perverted nature of slavery in all forms.

From my childhood I remember the elders discussing stories about lynchings and whites eating the flesh of our ancestors to gain their strength and lynchings celebrated by these evil people while they ate their lunches to the tunes of anguished screams from my poor ancestors.

The narrator’s voice sounds perverted and like that of an imagined enslaver. His voice alone is nauseating and condescending. He reads this like it’s an erotic fiction book versus the record of historical brutality perpetrated through slavery that it is.

At the time of this writing they are trying to erase their sins through legislation and book burnings. We American blacks whose ancestors built the country and continue to live under white supremacy will never forget.

Eye opening……

Different perspective….. knowledge which needs to be shared. Glad I purchased this… need to know

A Phenomenal Work

Vincent Woodard's The Delectable Negro is a phenomenal work of Black Queer scholarship. I compare it to W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk. He recovers and illuminates history which has hitherto been hidden. This story so engaged me that I finished it in two days. I highly recommend this book, which provides much food for thought.