Black Lives Under Nazism

Sarah Phillips Casteel’s beautifully written Black Lives Under Nazism offers a startling new account of the memory of World War II and the Holocaust that centers Black artists and writers. Moving from internment camp art and memoirs by historical eyewitnesses to the novels, photography, and dance of later generations, Casteel’s book reveals how certain histories are rendered invisible while simultaneously showing us the power of art and literature to reanimate the forgotten past and decolonize hegemonic perspectives. Black Lives Under Nazism is a fascinating work of recovery and a strong argument for a relational approach to memory. -- Michael Rothberg, author of The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators
Sarah Phillips Casteel’s rich, imaginative, and compelling study seeks to make visible the Black experience of the wartime period. Through her deft analysis of a diverse range of Black testimonial and creative work she brilliantly illustrates the limitations and possibilities these offer in creating countermemories of the Holocaust. -- Robbie Aitken, coauthor of Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960
The experience of people of African descent in the Third Reich has been hauntingly absent in the public imagination of the Holocaust. With her penetrating and sophisticated study, Sarah Casteel illuminates the lived histories of Black victims and survivors of the Nazi regime, thereby expanding the canon of Holocaust representation. -- Erin McGlothlin, author of The Mind of the Holocaust Perpetrator in Fiction and Nonfiction
Black Lives Under Nazism provides an in-depth analysis of a largely unknown corpus of Black African diaspora artworks and literature that address Black lives under Nazism. By making this corpus coherently visible, this book illuminates the complex relations of Black and Jewish experiences in World War II Europe and challenges extant scholarship in Black and Holocaust Studies. -- Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba, author of The Postcolonial African Genocide Novel: Quests for Meaningfulness
If you study any subject for long enough, even one with the depth and magnitude of Holocaust literature, there may come a point where the horizon of novelty seems to fade. That certainly doesn't mean that the art no longer captivates you, that the unimaginable loss no longer devastates you, or that the unyielding hatreds at the heart of Nazism cease to disturb you. But it can feel, at times, like they have lost the ability to surprise you. In such moments, you can only hope that a book like Sarah Phillips Casteel's Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art comes along to tap you on the shoulder. * Studies in American Jewish Literature *
A provocative and fascinating contribution to the growing historiography of Black European history and culture, the history and legacy of the Holocaust, the construction of memory, and the contingency of identity. * H-Material Culture *