Episode 69: Of One Blood

Got a sister? Are you SURE you don’t have a sister? Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood (1902-1903) explores this important question along with mesmerism, race, the legacy of American slavery, colonialism and imperialism in Africa, and--somehow--much more. In this episode we simply marvel at the adventures of our protagonist, doctor, anti-colonialist Indiana Jones, enemy of big cats, and king of the ancient Ethopian secret city of Telassar. This novel blew our minds, knocked our socks off, while keeping our pants secured in an upright position. Because you never know who your sister might be.

We read the edition from The Givens Collection with an introduction by Deborah E. McDowell. For more on Hopkins’s amazing work check out Dana Luciano’s “Passing Shadows: Melancholic Nationality and Black Critical Publicity in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Of one Blood” in David L. Eng and David Kazanjian’s Loss: the Politics of Mourning (2002). And if you’d like to learn more about the wild world of mesmerism, we recommend Emily Ogden’s Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism (2018).

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