Technology and the Logic of American Racism

"Lucid, eloquent, well-researched, and thoughtful. Chinn provides astute commentary on novels by Twain, Larsen, Thurman, Okada, and Hazlip and provocative analysis of palmistry, the 1924 Rhinelander case, the segregation of the national blood supply by race during the 1940s, black responses to rhetoric that linked blood and citizenship during WWII, and the recent Sally Hemmings controversy. But Chinn's study goes far beyond these examples, providing some of the clearest thinking available on the relationship between bodies and culture. The argument is never reductive. With impressive grace, the author manages both to reveal how bodies have been made to testify and to be conscious of 'the gingerliness, respect, strength, edginess, and tenderness with which we should approach our own bodies and the bodies of others, whether in words, concepts, or touch highly recommended for all academic collections." Choice, September 2001