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Article: "There was no resisting John Canoe": circum-Atlantic transracial performance.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Theatre History Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Mid-America Theatre Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John-Canoe is considered not merely as a person of material consequence, but one whose presence is absolutely indispensable.... There was no resisting John Canoe.
--MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS, Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies (1816, published 1845)
In her 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs writes of popular holiday slave performances she calls "Johnkannaus" The performances, appearing in various guises throughout the Atlantic world, once spread up the eastern seaboard of the United States and survive today in the Caribbean. Their movements--geographical as well as cultural--make them some of the ...