Keep Your Head to the Sky: Interpreting African American Home Ground - Paperback

by Grey Gundaker (Editor)

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.

Author Biography

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.