Medea's Plant Magic: Black Girlhood and Botanical Power

Catherine Keyser, PhD | Professor of English, University of South Carolina

The myth of Medea is about a sorceress who uses her power first to help the Greek hero Jason fulfill his quest for the Golden Fleece and later, after he betrays her, to destroy him by murdering their children. Contemporary African American literature, such as Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987), has long read this ancient story as a fable for colonial exploitation. This lecture will focus on two more recent novels, Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones (2011) and Kalynn Bayron's Her Poison Heart (2021), that entwine the myth of Medea with Black female sexuality and botanical life. By presenting Medea as an island witch whose skill with poisons derives from indigenous environmental knowledge that Jason gladly exploits, these novels reclaim her not as a figure of infanticide but rather as an embodiment of plant power. By doing so, they suggest a direct relationship between empowering Black girls and pursuing environmental justice.

Catherine Keyser, PhD, is a professor of English at the University of South Carolina and the author of Playing Smart: New York Women Writers and Modern Magazine Culture (2010) and Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fictions (2019). She is currently at work on a book project on the African American botanical imaginary tentatively titled Dark Gardening: Seed Stories and Black Survival.

Sponsored by the Classical Studies Program.