Shanna Greene Benjamin on Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay

Conversations in Atlantic Theory

This discussion is with Shanna Greene Benjamin, who teaches in the Department of African American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has published widely on African American literary and cultural studies, with particular emphasis on Black women’s literature and intellectual history. Along with numerous articles, she recently published Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay, out with University of North Carolina Press in 2021. The book was awarded honorable mention for the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association in 2022, and it is the occasion for our conversation today. In this conversation, we discuss the origins of the project, the mixed-genre presentation of McKay’s life, the organizing principles behind the book’s reckoning with archival materials, and the importance of placing Nellie Y. McKay at the heart of African American literary and cultural production.