Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga

Book Synopsis: “A riveting account of one of the more startling episodes in the . .  history of race in America” (Wall Street Journal).Ota Benga, a young African man, was featured as an exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging him with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the nation and Europe.

Spectacle explores the circumstances of Ota Benga’s captivity and the international controversy it inspired. Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Ota’s tragic existence, from the Congo to St. Louis to New York and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his short life.

Spectacle simultaneously explores New York City during the early years of the twentieth century, a racially fraught era that led to a rising tide of political disenfranchisement and social scorn for African Americans.

Praise for Spectacle
2016 NAACP Image Award Winner
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Root, and the Huffington Post Black Voices

“Here is a gripping and painstaking narrative that breaks new ground. Now, after a century, Benga has finally been heard.” —New York Times Book Review

“Deeply researched and thoughtful. . . . Writing with precision and moral clarity, Newkirk indicts a civilization whose ‘cruelty was cloaked in civility,’ leaving us to examine its remnants.” —Boston Globe

“This is an explosive, heartbreaking book. It unfolds with the grace of an E. L. Doctorow novel and spins forward with the urgency of a wild tabloid story.” —James McBride, National Book Award–winning author of The Good Lord Bird

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