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A review by laurenbookwitchbitch
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era by Tiya Miles
5.0
I finished Tiya Miles work of fiction ("The Cherokee Rose,") and immediately knew I had to pick up this book. I honestly cannot do it justice in my own words, so here are some of my favorite passages:
"Ghosts and the means by which we hold them in mind, ghost stories, make for a special mode of connection to the past-that is historical-the modern ghost story can be understood as a popular form of historical narrative. The stories that we tell about ghosts are a method of history making, then a cultural process by which we create, use, and understand history. Through ghost stories we preserve important personal and collective knowledge about what took place in the past, and particularly about events in the past that we have excluded from active, embraced memory." - pgs 14-15
"...African American spirits are not gullibly friendly, delightfully cartoonish, or controllably mainstream. They are deadly serious messengers from another time that compel us to wrestle with the past, a past chained to colonialism, slavery, and patriarchy, but a past that can nevertheless challenge and commission us to fight for justice in the present. We can call forth the power of ghosts as scholars, writers, teachers, artists and stewards of historic sites, as indeed we must if we are to place progressive social justice visions in contention with a culture possessed by ghost fancy. But let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry the integrity of our ancestors."- Pg 132
"Ghosts and the means by which we hold them in mind, ghost stories, make for a special mode of connection to the past-that is historical-the modern ghost story can be understood as a popular form of historical narrative. The stories that we tell about ghosts are a method of history making, then a cultural process by which we create, use, and understand history. Through ghost stories we preserve important personal and collective knowledge about what took place in the past, and particularly about events in the past that we have excluded from active, embraced memory." - pgs 14-15
"...African American spirits are not gullibly friendly, delightfully cartoonish, or controllably mainstream. They are deadly serious messengers from another time that compel us to wrestle with the past, a past chained to colonialism, slavery, and patriarchy, but a past that can nevertheless challenge and commission us to fight for justice in the present. We can call forth the power of ghosts as scholars, writers, teachers, artists and stewards of historic sites, as indeed we must if we are to place progressive social justice visions in contention with a culture possessed by ghost fancy. But let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry the integrity of our ancestors."- Pg 132