A new and expanded edition of one of the essential works of twenty-first-century literature

Zong!is a haunting lifeline between archive and memory, law and poetry.

In November 1781, the captain of the slave shipZongordered that some 150 Africans be murdered by drowning so that the ships owners could collect insurance monies. Relying entirely on the words of the legal decisionGregson v. Gilbertthe only extant public document related to the massacreZong!tells the story that cannot be told yet must be told. Equal parts song, moan, shout, oath, ululation, curse, and chant,Zong!excavates the legal text. Memory, history, and law collide and metamorphose into the poetics of the fragment. Through the innovative use of fugal and counterpointed repetition,Zong!becomes an anti-narrative lament that stretches the boundaries of the poetic form, haunting the spaces of forgetting and mourning the forgotten.

This fifteenth-anniversary edition features a new preface by the author and new essays by Saidiya Hartman and Katherine McKittrick. Widely regarded as one of the most influential and revered works of twenty-first-century literature, this new edition ofZong!will ensure this staggering works enduring legacy.