“This utterly original series of meditations on the back as a loadbearing form and metaphor never ceased to surprise, move, and delight me. Fearlessly experimental with its own forms and figures at a moment of stylistic conformity, Lauren Michele Jackson is, in Henry James's phrase, one of the people on whom nothing is lost.
— Sianne Ngai, author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting
“Jackson approaches her subject with verve and fluidity. Back is a collection of immense breadth—somatic, surprising, and cinematic in its scope." — Raven Leilani, author of the critically acclaimed novel Luster
"Lauren Michele Jackson represents the future of literary studies. She has a provocative, deeply intelligent, and compellingly argued vision that is being expressed in a solid and already recognized body of work uniting the trained eye of the academic critic with her propulsive voice as a public intellectual. Back: Essays on the Soul and Spine of America is a complex and insightful discussion of the literary questions of parody, sequel, and copyright considerations involved in a Black commentary of racist white canon, that survives at the mythical level of Gone with The Wind. Combining material, historical, and literary critical elements she brings a crisp and sly critique without any moment of being reductive. One feels in the sure hands of an intellectual who is rigorous, original, engaging and loves what she is doing. There really is no one out there right now, in the high-end popular media, who is doing what Dr. Jackson is doing. We are privileged to be along for the ride, to have the fun of being her colleague as she develops her forward-thinking perspective." — Sarah Schulman, author of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
“Jackson delivers a challenging and rewarding collection of essays interpreting the symbolism of the human back in literature, film, and art. This region of the body, Jackson reveals, holds a range of connotations, from beauty to labor (and thus capital and class). Poetic and provocative, this will give fans of cultural criticism plenty to chew on." — Publisher’s Weekly
“Back pains and other musings. Cultural critic and literary scholar Jackson offers seven wide-ranging, digressive essays on the back as structure and symbol. Jackson also muses about idiomatic uses of the term back—as in comeback, flashback, and even backyard. A sharp perspective informs an eclectic collection.” — Kirkus
