In the Wake... (2016)
Drawing upon multiple meanings of the term "wake"—the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness—Sharpe interrogates diverse artistic and cultural representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake," which conceptualizes how Black lives are animated by the afterlives of enslavement. Sharpe identifies "wake work" as a way forward for Black lives throughout the diaspora marked by brutal and violent histories.