Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South
Jodi Skipper
University of Iowa Press
When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives of enslaved people. Behind the Big House gives readers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to interpret the difficult history of slavery in the U.S. South. In laying out her experiences with the Behind the Big House program, a community-based model used at local historic sites to address slavery in the collective narrative of U.S. history and culture through an autoethnographic approach, Skipper seeks to help other activist scholars of color negotiate the nuances of place, the academic public sphere, and its ambiguous systems of reward, recognition, and evaluation.