Consuming Stories

"In this beautifully crafted book, Rebecca Peabody offers an in-depth analysis of Kara Walker's brilliant and provocative art. Just as Walker, the artist, forces viewers to reexamine their assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, and violence, Peabody, the scholar, challenges readers to delve deeply into Walker's source material and, in doing so, discover the essential, the painful, and the profound, not only in her work but in society as a whole."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University "In an era when the goal of criticism is more than ever to find what is 'problematic' in a work of art--rather than what is moving, complicated, invented, or absurd--Rebecca Peabody bravely explores Kara Walker's storytelling impulse. Stories are the things that don't make sense, that remain open, that open dialogues, that spark debates, that remain above the fray or beside the disaster they alone can articulate so well. The story is usually outside the domain of the scholar, but that is not the case here, much to Peabody's credit."--Alexander Nemerov, author of Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine "Rebecca Peabody has found a perspective that is fresh and innovative and one that advances new interpretive possibilities."--Derek Conrad Murray, Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz "Consuming Stories brings several previously unexplored ideas to the fore. Kara Walker emerges as a far more compelling practitioner than earlier treatments suggest. This is a text of superior scholarship."--Courtney J. Martin, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, Brown University