No Country for Old White Men: Living at the Boundary of Blackness: A review of Joshua Bennett, Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

ABSTRACT

No one will dispute that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has set the stage for deeper engagements with our collective feelings about racial disparity and the natural world. The title of Bennett's book is taken from a Lucille Clifton poem in which kinship with the natural world produces black life. Rather, Bennett's analysis wants to draw attention to animal life as "a site of recognition and reckoning" (11). Beginning with Tara Betts's poem, "For Those Who Need a True Story," Bennett deftly navigates the complexity of non-human animal life and black life and the significance of the language of pests, infestation, and vermin that demonstrates the meaningful co-habitation of black human and animal life.