The Tar Baby: A Global History

(Paperback)

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Description

A richly nuanced cultural history of an enigmatic and controversial folktale Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced throughout the world, including in Nige

Reviews

"This is an ambitious and meticulously researched study."Emily Zobel Marshall, Times Literary Supplement
"A lively . . . piece of cultural detective work exploring the history of the tar baby."Library Journal
"A remarkably rich and wide-ranging book that draws on many histories, geographies, and disciplines in exploring one of the nation'sand the world'smost disturbing but strangely elusive racial stories."Eric J. Sundquist, author of King's Dream
"Wagner's tar baby is not one we know; his account opens a wider horizon of persuasions and alignments that interrogate the onset of capitalism and the disorienting experience of early globalization."Hortense J. Spillers, author of Black, White, and in Color

Author Bio

Bryan Wagner is associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Disturbing the Peace.