3.5
Tales from the Haunted South
ByPublisher Description
In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of “ghost tours,” frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. “Dark tourism” often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic “Old South” narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities17 Reviews
3.5
vestellar
Created 4 months agoShare
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Terrald
Created 7 months agoShare
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“A reread from grad school, Tales from the Haunted South is an examination of how dark tourism has latched onto slavery in the American South. Miles admits ghost stories, while a radical form, are a potential "historical narrative that can dredge up unsettling social memories for reexamination." However while such stories can provide opportunities for engaging with a past that is often sanitized, there is often a lack of detail and sources to garner any real analysis of these events from a historical perspective. At the end of her research, Miles asserts "I find it a matter of serious concern that ghost tourism has gained a firm foothold within the boundaries of the former Old South, where the bodies of black slaves have once again become fodder for an innovating capitalist industry." I find myself agreeing with this sentiment as someone who resides in the South and has experienced such tours during my graduate studies. A needed critical examination of this industry, but not her best work in terms of writing.”Anna
Created 8 months agoShare
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beccagrawl
Created 8 months agoShare
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