Examine how commodities have been construed in a long history of Black American literature, stretching from the 19th to the 21st century. Explore how, far from being an objective phenomenon, the commodity obtains its meaning within specific historical circumstances (stretching from antebellum America to our present late capitalist moment), modes of economic production (ranging from the plantation economy to finance capitalism), and forms of aesthetic representation (including plays, poetry, fiction, and essays). Consider how alternative forms of subjectivity and collectivity can be created in a world organized around the logics of mass consumption and the bottom line.