Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof

Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof

Poems

  • Author: McCray, Carrie Allen; Simmonds, Kevin
  • Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
  • Serie: Palmetto Poetry Series
  • ISBN: 9781611170856
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781611171969
  • eISBN Epub: 9781611171969
  • Place of publication:  South Carolina , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2012
  • Month: August
  • Language: English

In Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof, Carrie Allen McCray (1913–2008) uses poignant and personal verse to trace the ill-fated life of the Congolese pygmy who was famously exhibited in the Bronx Zoo in 1906 before being taken in by the McCray family of Lynchburg, Virginia. Rooted in the rich historical and autobiographic context of her own experiences with Benga, McCray offers compelling, dexterous poems that place Benga's story within the racial milieu of the early twentieth century as the burgeoning science of social anthropology worked to classify humans based on race and culture. The theme of this book is a study of humanity, of people of all kinds, in which Benga's vitality becomes the measure against which everyone is measured. With poems that revel in African American signifying, spirituality, and traditional storytelling, McCray's collection establishes a sincere legacy for Ota Benga as she shares her friend's harrowing tale with new generations.

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Series Editor's Preface
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Night
  • Life in the Congo Forest
  • Fathers
  • Storm Warning
  • Dichotomy
  • Where Are the Hands?
  • The Girls in Ota's Forest
  • Ota's Courtship and Marriage
  • Kafi
  • Trail of the Mazungus
  • The Birth of Anthropology
  • Blues Man Answers
  • Hunters of Men
  • Strings I
  • Ota Crossing Big Watah
  • New Orleans
  • 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
  • The Anthropology Exhibit
  • Back Home
  • Measuring
  • The Real Measure of Man
  • On the Way to New York
  • Strings II
  • South Winds: The Pennsylvania Train
  • The Jim Crow Car
  • Virginia: The House on Durmid Hill
  • The Children's Virginia
  • Ota's Virginia
  • Loss
  • Return to the Orphanage
  • Return to the Southland
  • Like a Wind
  • Ota in Woods with Boys
  • Forest Man
  • Into the Woods Alone
  • Fire Dance
  • In the Dark of Night
  • Lamentations
  • Evening Song

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