The Miracle of the Black Leg
Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law
Upcoming Events
Join CLEAR in partnership with the Africana Studies Program for an engaging conversation with Professor Patricia J. Williams and Linda Greenhouse, an award-winning journalist and former staff member of The New York Times.
eventbrite.comMedia Coverage
After encountering a mysterious painting of amputation, I found myself thinking about severed legs, personal freedom, contracts, and the law.
The New York ReviewPatricia J. Williams’ musings reveal two major threads weaving these essays into a tapestry of challenging thought. With the first thread, Williams considers the tension between constitutional law and contract law. The second thread forming the tapestry is the complication that “history comes to us in pieces, perpetually unfinished, always in fragmentary form.”
Martha Vineyards TimesPatricia J. Williams (The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law) is in conversation with Régine Jean-Charles at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at Frugal Bookstore.
Boston GlobePatricia Williams, a distinguished professor of law and humanities at Northeastern University and a renowned scholar, releases a new book of essays.
Northeastern Global NewsPatricia J. Williams, one of the most provocative intellectuals in American law, holds a joint appointment in the School of Law and the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern University.
From 1997 until 2019, Williams wrote the popular “Diary of a Mad Law Professor” column for the Nation. She is a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” recipient and the author of six books. The Alchemy of Race and Rights was named one of the 25 best books of 1991 by the Voice Literary Supplement, one of the “feminist classics of the last 20 years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by Ms. magazine, and one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the decade by Amazon.com.
Praise
for The Miracle of the Black Leg
“There are few writers of whom I will say ‘I will read anything she writes.’ Pat Williams is one of those few.”
professor of law, University of Hawai‘i and author of Words That Wound
“Erudition, style, and common sense— wisdom, even—ground the fire that drives these remarkable essays, a fire they cannot but kindle in their readers.”
cultural critic and author of The Gift
“The Miracle of the Black Leg is a beautifully written, haunting book…Deeply and passionately—with an often searing wit—she moves us beyond the legacy of slavery to where a miracle of healing might take place: a saving cure for the enormous violence of separate but equal, civil death, and dispossession.”
author of The Law Is a White Dog and In the Belly of Her Ghost
“From the renowned legal scholar comes a stunning meditation on how we have assembled ourselves in the project of America’s racialized democracy. Patricia Williams’s powerful new work, The Miracle of the Black Leg, is a prompt to consider the most vital topics of our day.”
professor, Harvard University and founder of Vision & Justice
“Don’t be fooled by the serious subject matter; this whip-smart collection is the perfect beach read for readers getting a little fed up with current affairs. Writing in high literary style, Williams pokes at the tender spots in America’s psyche where law, science, and race intersect, arching a skeptical eyebrow throughout rigorous dissections of current events ranging from the cult of AI to book banning to Covid denialism. Absurdities and insights abound.”
reviews editor
“With The Miracle of the Black Leg, Patricia Williams once again invites us into her magnificent mind with a dazzling meditation on race, property, contract, bioethics, technology, public health, guns, and more. Readers will be inspired by the singularity of Williams’s brilliance. This book is a reminder that Williams is one of the most important legal scholars of our time.”
professor of law, UC Berkeley School of Law
“Ever since The Alchemy of Race and Rights, I have been enchanted by the elegance of Williams’s writing and her needle point analysis of contemporary life in race. With The Miracle of the Black Leg, she opens another treasure chest of breathtaking historical and contemporary detail.”
actress, playwright, and professor, NYU
“Patricia Williams has masterfully meditated on the horrors emerging from an enduring legacy of sorting, selling, and packaging bodies and identities from slavery to the present, exposing the myriad ways in which the thicket of law, society, science, and medicine contribute to bruise the spirit and flesh of those most vulnerable from the start.”
professor of law, Georgetown Law; host of the podcast On the Issues with Michele Goodwin; and author of Policing the Womb
“Patricia Williams yet again proves herself to be one of the sharpest thinkers on race and the law in our nation’s history. Law is at the center of our contemporary national crises, and Williams takes us on a journey deep into the history of cases and doctrine to understand how we got here and why ideas about the law can and should matter for all of us who believe in freedom.”
New York Times best-selling author of South to America
“Williams’s language soars across legal conundrums about race, slavery, property, personhood, abortion, immigration, labor, bioethics, health industries, gun violence, data gathering and surveillance, the integrity of bodies, and the commodification of life, encouraging us to rethink our relations to the long history of discourses of dispossession —up to their new technologically intensified versions—so that we might inhabit the world in more tender and capacious ways.”
Philip Mayhew Professor of English, Princeton University
Contact
Promotional Contact:
Helena Brantley
Red Pencil Publicity + Marketing
[email protected]
Promotional Contact:
Helena Brantley
Red Pencil Publicity + Marketing
[email protected]
510.316.3545
For more information and/or if you would like to join the mailing list for upcoming events and releases, please fill out the form below: