Rewriting Exodus: American Futures from Du Bois to Obama

Exodus, as a powerful narrative of liberation, has been a central imaginative touchstone in the African American struggle against US racism. This book traces the concept in a number of pivotal black thinkers, and explores its significance for contemporary America.

The Exodus story is a fitting allegory for the painful experience of exile that disproportionately afflicted African Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It also provided compelling imagery in the oratory of Barack Obama's presidential election campaign of 2008. Building around these themes, Anna Hartnell traces the intellectual development of one of the defining narratives of black American thinking on social justice in the United States.

In placing black America at the centre of the study of US political culture, Rewriting Exodus suggests new ways of thinking about America's relationship with race, the Middle East and the wider postcolonial world. Hartnell's groundbreaking contribution marks a vital new chapter in studies of contemporary American cultural and political history.

Anna Hartnell is a Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written for the Guardian, American Quarterly and Callaloo.