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Spectacle
Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga | Pamela Newkirk
10 posts | 8 read | 1 reading | 39 to read
2016 NAACP Image Award WinnerAn award-winning journalist reveals a little-known and shameful episode in American history, when an African man was used as a human zoo exhibita shocking story of racial prejudice, science, and tragedy in the early years of the twentieth century in the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Devil in the White City, and Medical Apartheid.In 1904, Ota Benga, a young Congolese pygmya person of petite staturearrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis Worlds Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the nation and Europe.Spectacle explores the circumstances of Ota Bengas captivity, the international controversy it inspired, and his efforts to adjust to American life. It also reveals why, decades later, the man most responsible for his exploitation would be hailed as his friend and savior, while those who truly fought for Ota have been banished to the shadows of history. Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Otas tragic life, from Africa to St. Louis to New York, and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his short life.Illuminating this unimaginable event, Spectacle charts the evolution of science and race relations in New York City during the early years of the twentieth century, exploring this racially fraught era for Africa-Americans and the rising tide of political disenfranchisement and social scorn they endured, forty years after the end of the Civil War. Shocking and compelling Spectacle is a masterful work of social history that raises difficult questions about racial prejudice and discrimination that continue to haunt us today.
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review
Singout
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Pickpick

Gutwrenching bio with multiple themes of colonization, Christian evangelism, eugenics, and racism. It tells the story of Ota Benga, a Mbuti (“pygmy“) Congoloese man who was kidnapped by an American thinly veiled as a missionary, brought to the US for show at the 1904 St. Louis World's fair, exhibited with monkeys at the Bronx Zoo for white people's amusement, then released with Black support.

#ReadingAfrica2022 #DRC
#NonFiction2022 #Outcast

Singout I appreciated how it wasn't just limited to what happened in the U.S., but looked at how the politics of the Belgian colonization of King Leopold and its context win wider Europe, the American history of enslavement, the longer history of Congolese peoples, and the structures and practices of Christian evangelism all intersected as parts of white supremacy.
2y
BarbaraBB Incredibly sad, all these white groups, and what it led to… 2y
Librarybelle Great review! 2y
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Singout

The [American Presbyterian] mission [to the DRC in 1895] was once again without a white presence, and Dr. Samuel Chester, Executive Secretary of the Board for World Missions, issued an urgent call for white recruits. He said it was “absolutely necessary to have one white man, and very desirable that we have at least two…more colored people are offering than we are able to send, but no white man is offering for the African work.” #ReadingAfrica DRC

Singout Very interesting after my work for several years in the national office of a Canadian church with Presbyterian roots, in the department that included overseas partnerships and personnel. 2y
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swynn
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A biography of a Central African man who in 1906 was put on exhibit in a cage in the Primate House of the Bronx Zoo. It's infuriating, doubly so because the book is largely a refutation of another, whitewashed, biography written in 1992 by a grandson of the missionary/businessman/con artist who leased Ota Benga to the Zoo. Newkirk has the documents and doesn't blink at uncomfortable detail. It's angry-making but also thorough and fascinating.

Cosmos_Moon_River Wow, crazy. 4y
IftyZaidi Am currently teaching my students about Imperialism and was telling them about the international exhibitions that often included human zoos. We tend to think of these things as being in the distant past but of course they are in living memory. The students were shocked by a photo of people feeding a Congolese child through the bars of a fence of a human zoo in 1958. 4y
swynn @IftyZaidi Thanks for that comment and for telling students about this-- Newkirk does talk about that context: European zoos and world fairs with human exhibits. Benga himself had been part of an exhibit at the St. Louis world's fair. I had no idea this was happening as late as 1958, but my capacity for surprise is exhausted. 4y
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bookwrm526
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Pickpick

I went into this book knowing that it was going to make me angry. How could the story of a man being displayed in the monkey house of a zoo not? But I didn't realize exactly HOW angry 😡. The book covers much more than just the story of Ota Benga, and does a good job of of contextualizing the story. I was familiar with some of the history (esp. of anthropology) but much was still startling. #LitsyAtoZ #LetterN

CouronneDhiver Oh gosh... I should probably read this too but 😤 8y
DebinHawaii This sounds interesting and tough to read. It reminds me of The Lost Tribe of Coney Island where members of an indigenous group in the Philippines were exploited and displayed at Luna Park in Coney Island. 8y
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DocBrown
Mehso-so

This was a tough one to read, and I imagine to write. Not only is its subject matter outrageously tragic, but the documentary record is maddeningly thin. What the author valiantly attempts, then, is to fill in the empty space with every possible detail not only about the subject but of all the people and places with which he had contact. The sad result, ironically, is that Ota Benga becomes a secondary character in his own story.

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alovely26

this book is starting to irritate me..... not the book itself but the character of the people in the book.

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razmanda
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Lunchtime reading and it feels a little too fresh. This quote is more than a hundred years old so why do I feel like we haven't made any progress?

bookwrm526 It's hitting especially close to home right now, since I work so close to Charlotte 8y
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razmanda
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Ignoring the mess and diving in.

SusanInTiburon That's not a mess. That's books. 8y
razmanda @SusanInTiburon it's a mess of books! And matching cards! 😂😂😂 8y
maximoffs That is not a mess. The floor is just one long shelf om 8y
maximoffs ok* 8y
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razmanda
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Working my way through my #blacklivesmatter TBR list. Love my inter office library book delivery.

ReadingEnvy Ooh where does that list live? I'm the librarian for a writing class with that name this fall. 8y
razmanda @ReadingEnvy @bookriot has an excellent article re BLM and books to read! On my list that I've finished so far are Bad Feminist, Between the World and Me, and Americanah. 8y
razmanda @ReadingEnvy and still to be read, Ain't I a Woman; Pushout; and White Trash. 8y
ReadingEnvy Ah cool. I've read the same three as you. I also have my eye on the new Jesmyn Ward essay compilation. 8y
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Liberty
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Pickpick

Today marks the 100th anniversary of Ota Benga's death, which gives me an opportunity to mention Spectacle. This book is remarkable and horrifying and fascinating.

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