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= The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies =

The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies is a 2019 nonfiction book written by Tiffany Lethabo King and published by Duke University Press. In The Black Shoals, King uses the shoal, a geologic formation, as a site of theorization, methodology, and vehicle of critique to explore the encounter between Black studies and Native studies. Through the literary political and theoretical traditions of Black and Native studies, King, offers insight into how anti-Blackness, slavery and indigenous genocide constitute white supremacy. Looking at both the convergence and divergence between Black and Native traditions of thought, Tiffany King explores the possibilities of generating new epistemologies and avenues of critical insight.

Contents
King describes The Black Shoals as a project that “calls for Black studies and Native studies to speak directly to one another.” In an interview about the book, King states “Because of conquest and racial violence, Black and Native people have had to do a lot of talking through and past white people in order to communicate with each other. I hope that my book carves out some discursive space that can facilitate more connections between Black and Indigenous folks, particularly in the US.”

King’s introduction lays out a variety of theories, methodologies and frameworks that serve as the foundation and paradigm for the rest of her book. Most notably, the chapter introduces readers to the notion of the shoal, an offshore geologic formation that is neither solid or fluid, land or sea, and serves as aas metaphor and methodology to theorize the relationship and possibilities that arise in the generative friction between Black studies and Native studies.

The first chapter begins with an examination of the 2015 defacement of a columbus statue in Boston. King’s reading of the beheading and defacement identifies the act as conceptual shoal that disrupts modern and postmodern logics  of settler colonial studies King is intervening in. The chapter also engages a discourse of conquest using both Black and Native studies  to visibilze the violence of “white/human self making”.

The second and third chapters introduce William Gerard de Brahm’ s map of the coast of what is now South Carolina and Georgia from the 18th century. King reinterprets the map, identifying how British settlers endeavored to depict logics of European whiteness, through cartography. The chapter also describes Black and Indigenous resistance against  British efforts to settle and constitute humanity through the domination of Black and Indigenous “livingness.”

The fourth chapter once again turns to the Daughters of the Dust compendium, examining Black and Native erotics as possible “portals to intergenerational healing.” King expands on Native feminist and queer theorizations, speaking to decolonial critiques of heteronormativity as undergirding anti-Blackness and colonial constructs of sovereignty.

The fifth chapter uses Charmaine Lurch’s sculpture, Revisiting Sycorax, which King describes as a  “multidimensional and porous black and copper wire sculpture” that captures Black and Native female figures as in relationship to one another. The chapter describes how the sculpture rearranges traditional modes of engagement with Blackness and Indigeneity, ending with an description of the aesthetic space crafted by Lurch as wrinkling the smooth surface of Black diaspora studies. The Black Shoals concludes with a reaffirmation of the importance of connectedness and relationality that help us begin to imagine Black and Native futures.

Honors and Awards
The Tiffany King’s Black Shoals was named a finalist for the 2020 Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone book award and the winner of the 2020 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, presented by the American Studies Association

Reviews
Mishauna Goeman, writes "Tiffany Lethabo King's concept of the shoal breaks new ground for thinking through the relationships between Indigenous peoples and African Americans and genocide and slavery as well as how they have formed our contemporary politics. Her rigorous engagement with Black and Indigenous studies will create a better dialogue between the two fields."

Darryl Barthé in Ethnic and Racial Studies writes “The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies is a profound contribution, and necessary step, in an ongoing discourse between the African diaspora and the indigenous people of the western hemisphere.”

George Ygarza in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples  writes “Tiffany Lethabo King own being embodies a shoal. Stories of resistance, histories of resilience and powerful oration have flowed through her along the way to publishing this book. Her ancestral knowledge emanates from sites of struggle and perseverance shared alongside first nation peoples. King grounds herself in place as she thinks through undercurrents of survival that have carried her to this moment in the opening pages of the book, revisiting the conversations with elders and community outside the confines of the academic institution.”