How to Lose the Hounds
Maroon Geographies and a World beyond Policing
Celeste Winston
- 192 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
How to Lose the Hounds
Maroon Geographies and a World beyond Policing
Celeste Winston
About This Book
In How to Lose the Hounds Celeste Winston explores marronageâthe practice of flight from and placemaking beyond slaveryâas a guide to police abolition. She examines historically Black maroon communities in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, that have been subjected to violent excesses of police power from slavery until the present day. Tracing the long and ongoing historical geography of Black freedom struggles in the face of anti-Black police violence in these communities, Winston shows how marronage provides critical lessons for reimagining public safety and community well-being. These freedom struggles take place in what Winston calls maroon geographiesâsites of flight from slavery and the spaces of freedom produced in multigenerational Black communities. Maroon geographies constitute part of a Black placemaking tradition that asserts life-affirming forms of community. Winston contends that maroon geographies operate as a central method of Black flight, holding ground, and constructing places of freedom in ways that imagine and plan a world beyond policing.