European journal of American studies, Vol 9, No 1 | 2014

This article argues that the practical jokes running throughout Wilson’s novel Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859) are evidence of a deliberate and sophisticated comic strategy that exploits the spectacular body’s potential for subversive performance and works against thealienating conditions of social and political marginalisation experienced by African Americans inthe antebellum period. Initially utilising the crude humour of minstrelsy, Wilson deliberatelycapitalised on her readers’ laughter in order to defamiliarise the ‘spectacle’ of blackness in bothpopular performance culture and indentured servitude. Using movement, costume and materialprops, Wilson imagines new ways to present her protagonist’s body through the minstrel‘Twisting herself into all shapes’: blackface minstrelsy and comic performan... European journal of American studies, Vol 9, No 1 | 201413