Brown was a slave in Virginia before he escaped to the free state of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1850 by shipping himself in a box in which he hid for 27 hours.

Brooks describes Brown's performance of his "traveling entrapment" in the box as "a metaphor of physical resistance to the antebellum period’s rigorous literal and figurative colonization of black bodies".

Brown begins to undergo his "self-making" process when the inevitable enslavement of his family evoked his desire for liberation and self-determination.

Improvising on biblical verse to create his celebratory hymns, Brown's songs essentially express his hope and ecstasy for deliverance by God.

[8] In this sense, Brown subverts the institutional colonization of his blackness by utilizing sacred songs to create a transcendent free world.

Taking advantage of the institutional belief that African Americans are incapable of subjectivity-guided actions, Brown and his friends plotted his escape.

[9] Bodies in Dissent is generally praised for having given a rich account of how African Americans use performance to express resistance against oppression by white-dominant institutions during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Nevertheless, critic Sinéad Moynihan argues that Brooks fails to "demarcate the exact limits of the term "performance"", which threatens to "render (the study) both everything and nothing".

The inspiration of Jeff Buckley’s Grace comes from Brooks’ amusement at the white artist's ability to sing like different artists at different times: "I was amazed that this young, stunningly handsome white guy from Southern California could sing like Nina Simone one minute and sound like Robert Plant the next".