Posthumanist Reading of Susan Straight’s A Million Nightingales and Her Representations of African American Family

This study presents a new posthumanist reading of Susan Straight’s A Million Nightingales (2007), proposing a novel vision of familial relationships. The primary focus of my analysis is on the posthumanist representations of the African American family in A Million Nightingales, which suggest the blurring of existing boundaries and hierarchies through the underscoring of the importance of memory, body marks, and animated things. I draw inspiration from both Jane Bennett’s and Donna Haraway’s theories, assuming that a new reading of the novel should focus on the importance of embracing all the differences to create a more interconnected and harmonious existence for all beings.