Overview

Uncovering the spirit of freedom and self-determination in New Orleans In Under a Black Star, Amari Johnson explores what he defines as the ""maroon impulse"" among the BlackStar Community in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. This community sought autonomy for Black people facing systemic marginalization through denied employment, insufficient education, and a housing crisis following Hurricane Katrina, establishing initiatives such as Kamali Academy, a homeschool collective, and BlackStar Books and Caffe, a bookstore and gathering place. Instead of appealing to the city, they built the community they desired by employing legacies of marronage: disengagement, flight, and reengagement. An active participant in the physical and ideological development of these autonomous spaces, Johnson provides nuanced insights into the community's work toward liberation and self-determination. Demonstrating that marronage is a cultural tradition throughout the African Diaspora, he focuses on the transtemporal maroon process to show how it is central to the pursuit of autonomy, community, and freedom. From the swamps of southeastern Louisiana, across urban obstacles, and into BlackStar's creative spaces, Johnson's path leads him to ask: How did the New Orleans community mobilize the tradition of marronage to create autonomous spaces amid gentrification? What forms might the maroon impulse take in the twenty-first century? This dynamic ethnographic memoir ultimately illuminates marronage as a potent form of liberatory potential, offering strategies for similar communities across the country and around the world.

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9781517916534

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""This important book is an absorbing examination of the aims and possibilities of the ‘maroon impulse’ in Black life and culture in New Orleans. The eclectic use of autoethnographic vignette, memory, critique, and ethnography creates a compelling account that makes invaluable interventions in education studies, Black studies, geography, and anthropology.""—J.T. Roane, author of Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place

Author Information

Amari Johnson is an independent scholar, musician, and filmmaker based in Philadelphia.

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