Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism

»Plantation Memories« explores everyday racism. It is a compilation of episodes approaching racism as a psychological reality. Everyday racism, argues Grada Kilomba, is experienced as a violent shock which suddenly places the Black subject in a colonial scene – depriving one’s link with society. Unexpectedly, the past comes to coincide with the present and the present is experienced as if one were in that agonizing past, as the title Plantation Memories announces. Linking postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis and poetic narrative, she provides a new and inspiring interpretation of everyday racism, memory, trauma and decolonization in the form of short stories. From the question “Where do you come from?” to the N-Word or Hair politics, the book is essential to anyone studying African studies, postcolonialism, critical whiteness and psychoanalysis.