Everything Man

The Form and Function of Paul Robeson

From his cavernous voice and unparalleled artistry to his fearless struggle for human rights, Paul Robeson was one of the twentieth century’s greatest icons and polymaths. In Everything Man Shana L. Redmond traces Robeson’s continuing cultural resonances in popular culture and politics. She follows his appearance throughout the twentieth century in the forms of sonic and visual vibration and holography; theater, art, and play; and the physical environment. Redmond thereby creates an imaginative cartography in which Robeson remains present and accountable to all those he inspired and defended. With her bold and unique theorization of antiphonal life, Redmond charts the possibility of continued communication, care, and collectivity with those who are dead but never gone.

Everything Man Introduction

Awards

  • 2022 Irving Lowens Book Award, Society for American Music
  • 2021 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award, American Musicological Society
  • 2021 Finalist, ASALH Book Prize, Association for the Sudy of African American Life & History
  • 2021 Walter & Lilian Lowenfels Award for Criticism, American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation
  • 2021 Finalist, Sterling Stuckey Book Prize, Association for the study of Worldwide African Diaspora
  • 2020 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine

Praise

“Formally challenging and beautifully conceived, Everything Man is a model for scholarship and thinking as well as a powerful addition to the body of work on Paul Robeson, freedom movements, sound studies, music, and beyond. It will make a tremendous impact.”

Christina Sharpe

author of In the Wake and Ordinary Notes

Shana Redmond’s ingenious reframing of Paul Robeson as Afrofuturist media artist is but one quality marking Everything Man as a milestone contribution to Robeson scholarship.

Greg Tate

author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk and Flyboy 2

“[A] deeply innovative exploration of the cultural resonances of the titanic – yet often now overlooked African American song interpreter, actor, athlete and Freedom Fighter Paul Robeson. … Redmond returns Robeson to his rightful place at the center of the American conversation.

Ann Powers

NPR’s Best Books of 2020

“I loved [this] book. I read it as a metaphysical ode to Robeson… What I loved was [Redmond’s] poetic grace in lifting him up… I was deeply moved by [the] work.”

Saul Williams

poet, musician, actor, filmmaker

Everything Man is truly remarkable, a work of aesthetic and conceptual experimentation as much as scholarly criticism or biography. …Everything Man is a book less of narrative than of lush immersion, of enchantment.

Gustavus Stadler

author of Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life

Redmond requests that readers disavow convention; in my estimation, then, one can relate to the monograph as an opera. If the metaphor sings true, Redmond herself, akin to Leontyne Price, vocalizes as a lyric soprano who flirts in coloratura.

I. Augustus Durham

author of Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius

Shana L. Redmond, Ph.D.

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