How to Lose the Hounds: Maroon Geographies and a World beyond Policing

by Celeste Winston

In How to Lose the Hounds Celeste Winston explores marronage—the practice of flight from and placemaking beyond slavery—as 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 geographies—sites 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Geography

192 pages, Hardcover

Published October 13, 2023

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably one of my top-5 favorite books of the year. Winston beautifully intertwines theory with narrative to offer an analytic portrait of maroon communities in Montgomery County, Maryland. I've been reading deeply around abolition the past couple of years (see my read list!), and this is the first book that offers some concrete examples of what creating community outside of policing looks like - in a way that's nuanced, compelling, and grounded in a place. Her use of maroon geographies and critical spatial frames is incredibly effective and compelling, and the last couple of paragraphs in particular offered novel insights - her framing of "abolition policy" is so useful. I will be coming back to this one again, and hopefully assigning some chapters in a new class I'm teaching this spring.