The “afterlife of slavery,” a concept coined by Saidiya Hartman and rooted in the work of Hazel V. Carby and Hortense Spillers, explores how the legacy of transatlantic slavery continues to shape American life. Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) is often cited as central to this framework. Yet in A Mercy (2008), Morrison imagines a world outside the constraints of this legacy, set in a time before slavery’s full establishment. This lecture examines how Morrison’s later novel engages with, or departs from, the afterlife of slavery, focusing on archival materials that reveal her role in shaping its publication.

Professor Kinohi Nishikawa teaches African American literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground (University of Chicago Press, 2018), and co-editor of Sites of Memory: Toni Morrison and the Archive. His work has appeared in ASAP/Journal, American Literary History, and Novel.