Keep Your Head to the Sky
The concept of African American home ground knits together diverse aspects of the American landscape, from elite suburbs and tower apartments to the old homeplaces of the countryside, to the tabletop array of family photos beside the bed of a housebound elder. This fascinating volume focuses on ways African Americans have invested actual and symbolic landscapes with signifigance, gained the means to acquire property, and brought new insight to the interpretation of contemporary, historical, and archaelogical sites. Keep Your Head to the Sky demonstrates how visions of home, past and present, have helped to shape African Americans' sense of place, often under extremely hostile conditions.
- Judith Wilson, University of California-IrvineKeep Your Head to the Sky is a ground-breaking work. The first book to focus on a crucial aspect of African American culture, it examines the ways in which an exiled people has located itself through such activities as 'yard work.' Gundaker brings togeth some of the top scholars in the field, as well as a number of exciting new voices. While the resulting material is often controversial, it is well-argued and thoroughly documented.
Grey Gundaker is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at the College of William and Mary and the author of Signs of Diaspora/Diaspora of Signs: Literacy, Creolization, and Vernacular Practice in African America.
