The Cattle Killing (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Edgar Wideman
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Metafiction
- Subjects: African Americans, Racism, Slavery or slaves, Blindness or blind persons, Interracial relationships, Religion, Lynching, Yellow fever
- Locales: Philadelphia, PA
Told in a complex intertexual layering that juxtaposes the Philadelphia of the late eighteenth century with that of the 1990's, The Cattle Killing provides Wideman with an opportunity to reconfigure a common theme in his writing: the mythically resonant patterning of experience across history that can provide clues by which the past may explain—and potentially redeem—the present. The title derives from a legend detailing how the Xhosa people of South Africa allowed false prophecy to dupe them into killing their cattle herds to effect the departure of the white imperialists...
[The entire page is 669 words long]
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