ABSTRACT
In this chapter, two scholars, a sociologist and a historian, have each contributed their respective work on cultural necrophilia and African American death ways in order to address how the U.S. continues to go unmourning the tens of thousands of African American COVID-19 deaths that lay at the intersection of capitalism and grief illiteracy. In the first half of the chapter, Tamara Waraschinski lays bare the prevailing death denial attitude that disallowed Americans to grieve or even handle death in a healthy way, or what she theorizes as the Necrophile Self, a cultural trait of death phobia and consumerism within the individual. In the second half, Kami Fletcher provides a historical understanding of how racism and its attendant violence has never provided African Americans the option of denying death. Both scholars merge ideas of Black Feminist theory and Womanism to conclude the chapter and therefore illustrate important lessons about Black women and their truth to power through politicized mourning and grief.
