2019104 number 28NORTH CAROLINA L I TERARY REV IEW

1 In fact, in 1956, Knopf published The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South by Kenneth M. Stampp, an eminent historian.

AUN’ PEGGY:CHARLES CHESNUTT’SAUN’ PEGGY

CHARLES CHESNUTT’SAUN’ PEGGYVAMPIRE SLAYER?VAMPIRE SLAYER?VAMPIRE SLAYER?CHARLES CHESNUTT’SVAMPIRE SLAYER?CHARLES CHESNUTT’S

Trudier Harris is grateful to Dr. Briana Whiteside of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for reading this essay and offering helpful suggestions. Dr. Whiteside agrees that Aun’ Peggy “uses small tranquilizing daggers that could subdue [slavery], if only for a short time” (correspondence with the author on 9 Aug. 2018).

HISTORIANS AND SCHOLARS have routinely referred to slavery in the United States as “the peculiar institution.”1 While not exactly a misnomer, the phrase, nonetheless, gives one pause. If the institu-tion were so peculiar, then why did it garner such popularity? Or does peculiar refer to the inexcusably inhumane ways in which people of African descent were treated, thus making it peculiar that human beings could paradoxically treat other human beings in such mon-strous ways? Or, did peculiar mean that it was strange for Americans to hold human beings in bondage when they, themselves, had come

across the ocean seeking various kinds of freedoms? Was the absence of freedom for people of African descent the basis for the peculiarity, especially since slavery is diametrically opposed to every tenet of American democracy? What did that nearly oxymo-ronic concept convey? Whether the framers of the Constitution or any of the persons who held black

BY TRUDIER HARRISTRUDIER HARRIS is an American literary scholar whose work focuses on African American literature, especially women writers, African American culture, and Southern literature and culture. Her numerous honors include, most recently, the Richard Beale Davis Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Literary Studies. A native of Tuscaloosa, AL, Harris earned her BA in English from Stillman College and her MA and PhD from The Ohio State University. She is the author of ten books and the editor or co-editor of more than a dozen more. Formerly the J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor of English at UNC Chapel Hill, she is now a University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Alabama.

“WHETHER THE FRAMERS OF

THE CONSTITUTION OR ANY

OF THE PERSONS WHO HELD

BLACK FOLKS IN BONDAGE

PAUSED TO CONSIDER

THE PECULIARITY, THE

INCONSISTENCY, OR THE

INHUMANITY OF THEIR

ACTIONS, IT IS CLEAR THAT

PECULIAR DID NOT MEAN

STRANGE ENOUGH TO CALL

AN END TO THE PRACTICE.”

North Carolina African American Literature 105N C L R

folks in bondage paused to consider the peculiarity, the inconsistency, or the inhumanity of their actions, it is clear that peculiar did not mean strange enough to call an end to the practice. As we know, the peculiar institution, with its various peculiarities, existed on United States soil for hundreds of years. And we know that it was only with great mental and physical force that the most egregious forms of the institution were eradicated.

As the phrase “the peculiar institution” lingers in historical and scholarly imagination, I want to suggest another possibility for its in-terpretation. I accept the labeling of slavery as the peculiar institution because slavery could be interpreted as a form of vampirism. And vampirism is nothing if not peculiar. I posit, therefore, that slavery, like the mythical vampirism, sucked the life blood out of the people of African descent who were unfortunate enough to be caught in its bloodthirsty clutches. No black human beings trapped in this system could remain fully whole as its practices drained them of energy (labor), drained them of expecta-tions for escape, drained them of family members and family ties, and drained them, fi nally, of their very lives. For the most part, though, the vampiric system oper-ated as Jewelle Gomez’s vampires do in The Gilda Stories.2 It took what it needed without destroying its victims completely – or at least not right away. Unlike Gomez’s vampires, however, it gave little, if anything, positive in return. This greedy and destructive system experienced few effective chal-lenges to its existence. Certainly, we hear of (mostly failed) slave rebellions, but, usually, blacks had little redress and little opportunity to escape from their oppression.

2 Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories (IFirebrand, 1991).

WITH ILLUSTRATIONSBY PAULA JORDAN-MAYO

Born and raised in Rocky Mount, NC, PAULA JORDAN-MAYO is an illustrator pursuing a career in graphic novels. She earned her BFA in Illustration from East Carolina University in 2018. While attending ECU, she interned for Pitt County’s Emerge Gallery & Art Center, which featured her art in brochures for Emerge Gallery’s annual Jolly Trolley Polar Express and commissioned her to illustrate a design for the annual PirateFest. She also worked as a graphic designer for ECU’s Joyner Library. In the 2017 Undergraduate Exhibition, she received an Award of Excellence in Illustration for her work “Fish Hippie Labels: Chardonnay, Merlot, & Riesling.” She currently resides in Asheboro, NC.