Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South [Paperback]

2022 Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group Nelson Graburn Prize, winner

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 Housegives readers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to interpret the difficult history of slavery in the U.S. South. The book explores Jodi Skipper’s eight-year collaboration 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.

In laying out her experiences 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.
 2022 Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group Nelson Graburn Prize, winner

Behind the Big Housegives readers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to interpret the difficult history of slavery in the U.S. South. The book explores Jodi Skipper’s eight-year collaboration 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.
 “Behind the Big Househas the heart of a gorgeous memoir and the bones of our most evocative scholarly texts. Jodi Skipper meets readers and monuments where we are, and chronicles superbly what it means to make, destroy, and really rebuild a region’s history. Stunning work.”—Kiese Laymon, author,Heavy: An American Memoir“Skipper has illuminated for us one of the most pressing issues in American identity—how we reckon with our own original sin of enslavement. More than that, she’s illuminatingl#º