White People in Shakespeare: Essays on Race, Culture and the Elite ed. by Arthur L. Little, Jr (review)

Imtiaz Habib examines the formal logic of the Petrarchan sonnet sequence—the need for failure in order to compel its composition and reiteration—as a means of reinscribing, over and over, the whiteness of noble men as an index of their power. In chapter 6, David Sterling Brown shows white hands as a signal of white social power, a conviction that requires Antony to “mutilate” (108) Cleopatra in order to attach white hands to her so as to render her an equal political and sexual partner. Chapters by Margo Hendricks; Keith Hamilton Cobb, Anchuli Felicia King, and Robin Alfriend Kello (in conversation); and Peter Sellers and Ayanna Thompson (in conversation) exfoliate how white stories are retold through Shakespeare because the stories so often remain clenched in white hands—those of teachers, producers, directors, and media makers.