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A hundred summers book review7/3/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Ryan’s work on racialized need can help us understand the connections between Christianity, race, and mass incarceration. As a result, “the categories of blackness, Indianness, and Irishness…came to signify need itself.” Elite Americans thereby “raced” need, assigning essential difference to populations they sought to relieve. Ryan argues that benevolent activists ascribed need to entire groups of people. Recipients, on the other hand, functioned as people in need. Reformers operated as true citizens by sustaining themselves and providing for others. This paper draws on literary scholar Susan Ryan’s work to show how Americans worked out national as well as racial identities through benevolent activity, including forms of reformative incarceration. ![]()
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