THE DELECTABLE NEGRO: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture

THE DELECTABLE NEGRO: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture. By Vincent Woodard. New York: New York University Press. 2014.

The Delectable Negro explores American slave culture, revealing the fantasies, investments, and discourses that figure the black slave as consumable and desirable-both charged with homoeroticism. For Vincent Woodard, notions of cannibalism and consumption within slave culture have been overlooked by scholars, so this radical and incisive book disrupts our conventional readings of slavery as well as key literary and political texts. It should be noted here that Woodard died before this book was published; it is a shame that he could not see his daring work enter debate. Praise must go to Joyce and McBride, moreover, for their careful and attentive editorial work that made the publication of this text possible.

Woodard's study attends to the moment when "black masculinity, racial identity, homoeroticism, and a distinctive American appetite for black...