MANDINGO and other classics of "slavesploitation"

Kyle Onstott's 1957 novel MANDINGO was the first American work of popular fiction to kick open the darkest doors of our nation's history and depict the horrors of chattel slavery in up close and personal horrifying detail, and its success spawned a literary sub-genre rife with ever-escalating doses of graphic sex and violence that would come to be dubbed "slavesploitation." MANDINGO unexpectedly birthed a dozen official sequels, countless ripoffs — both domestic and foreign — and a major Hollywood motion picture (plus one sequel), and even now the material is considered unimaginably offensive and too hot to handle in terms of its highly sensitive and prurient racially charged content. The majority of slavesploitation's audience is composed of white audiences that reveled in all manner of master/slave sleazery and domination scenarios, but there is a considerable underground of African-American fans who enjoy the books for the same reasons, only from a different perspective. A black reader cannot experience the slavesploitation genre and admit to a certain sense of guilt while being entertained by their prurient anti-charms...or can they? If we break the chains of political correctness and own these tales of how both masters and slaves were dehumanized by the evil of slavery, I say we can! So come with me on a guided tour of Falconhurst plantation, and watch out fo' de massa's rheumatiz. Muthafukka's feets be cold!