The portable nineteenth-century African American women writers

Book - 2017

"A landmark collection documenting the social, political, and artistic lives of African American women throughout the tumultuous nineteenth century. The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women's suffrage, temperance, and civil righ...ts, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of African American women writers be read, remembered, and addressed."--

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Subjects
Published
New York, New York : Penguin Books [2017]
Language
English
Item Description
"Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women's suffrage, temperance, and civil rights, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers."-- Provided by publisher.
Physical Description
xl, 613 pages ; 21 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages xxxiv-xl).
ISBN
9780143105992
  • What Is an African American Classic?
  • Introduction
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers
  • Personal Accounts of Abolition and Freedom
  • 1. Anonymous (no date)
  • "Address to the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia, on Their First Anniversary: By a Member" (1832)
  • 2. Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883)
  • "Speech Delivered to Women's Rights Convention in Akron Ohio" (1851)
  • Anti-Slavery Bugle Version (1851)
  • Frances D. Gage Version (1863)
  • Selections on Western Settlement from Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1875)
  • Petition to Congress
  • "Truths from Sojourner Truth"
  • From The N. Y. Tribune. Sojourner Truth at Work
  • 3. Mary Prince (ca. 1788-after 1833)
  • Excerpt from The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831)
  • 4. Nancy Prince (1799-after 1856)
  • From A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince (1850)
  • 5. Maria W. Stewart (ca. 1805-1879)
  • "An Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall" (1833)
  • 6. Sarah Mapps Douglass (Zillah) (1806-1882)
  • "A Mother's Love" (1832)
  • 7. Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
  • "The Loophole of Retreat" from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
  • 8. Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907)
  • "The Secret History of Mrs. Lincoln's "Wardrobe in New York," from Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1861)
  • 9. Eliza Potter (1820-after 1861)
  • "New Orleans," from A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life (1859)
  • 10. Harriet Wilson (1825-1900)
  • Selections from Our Nig (1859)
  • Preface
  • Chapter I: Mag Smith, My Mother
  • Chapter XII: The Winding Up of the Matter
  • 11. Hannah Crafts/Bond (1826-after 1859)
  • Selections from The Bondwoman's Narrative (ca. 1858)
  • Chapter 1: In Childhood
  • Chapter 13: A Turn of the Wheel
  • 12. Sarah Parker Remand (1826-1894)
  • "The Negroes in the United States of America" 1862)
  • 13. Louisa Picquet (ca. 1829-1896)
  • "The Family Sold at Auction-Louisa Bought by a 'New Orleans Gentleman,' and What Came of it," from The Octoroon (1861)
  • Fugitives and Emigrants: Moving West and North
  • 14. Mrs. John Little (no date)
  • "Mrs. John Little," from The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (1856)
  • 15. Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893)
  • Selections from A Plea for Emigration, or, Notes of Canada West (1852)
  • Settlements,-Dawn,-Elgin,-Institution,-Fugitive Home
  • Political Rights-Election Law-Oath-Currency
  • 16. Jennie Carter (Semper Fidelis) (ca. 1830-1881)
  • "Letter from Nevada County: Mud Hill, September 2, 1868"(1868)
  • "Letter from Nevada County: Mud Hill, September 12, 1868"(1868)
  • 17. Abby Fisher (ca, 1832-after 1881)
  • Selections from What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc. (1881)
  • Preface and Apology
  • Jumberlie-A Creole Dish
  • Oyster Gumbo Soup
  • Tonic Bitters-A Southern Remedy for Invalids
  • Sweet Cucumber Pickles
  • Pap for Infant Diet
  • Northern Women and the Post-War South
  • 18. Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914)
  • "Life on the Sea Islands" (1864)
  • "Charles Sumner, On Seeing Some Pictures of the Interior of His House" (1874)
  • "The Gathering of the Grand Army" (1890)
  • 19. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924)
  • "Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women" (1895)
  • "An Open Letter to the Educational League of Georgia" (1889)
  • 20. Edmonia Goodelle Highgate (1844-1870)
  • "A Spring Day Up the James" (1865)
  • "Rainy-Day Ink Drops" (1865)
  • "Neglected Opportunities" (1866)
  • "On Horse Back-Saddle Dash, No. 1" (1866)
  • Memoirs: Looking Back
  • 21. Julia A. J. Foote (1823-1900)
  • Selections from A Brand Plucked from the Fire (1879)
  • Chapter I: Birth and Parentage
  • Chapter IV: My Teacher Hung for Crime
  • Chapter XIX: Public Effort-Excommunication
  • Chapter XXII: A Visit to My Parents-Further Labors
  • 22. Jarena Lee (1783-1855)
  • Selection from Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel (1849)
  • My Call to Preach the Gospel
  • 23. Zilpha Elaw (1790-after 1845)
  • Selection from Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour (1846)
  • 24. Lucy Delaney (ca. 1830-after 1891)
  • Selections from From Darkness Cometh the Light (1891)
  • Chapter IV
  • Chapter V
  • 25. Ella Sheppard (1851-1914)
  • "Historical Sketch of the Jubilee Singers" (1911)
  • Poetry, Drama, and Fiction
  • 26. Sarah Forten Purvis (Magawisca) (1814-1884)
  • "The Slave Girl's Address to Her Mother" (1831)
  • "The Abuse of Liberty" (1831)
  • "Lines" (1838)
  • 27. Ann Plato (ca. 1820-after 1841)
  • "Education" (1841)
  • "The Natives of America" (1841)
  • 28. Julia Collins (unknown-1865)
  • Selections from The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bade (1865)
  • Chapter VI
  • Chapter VIII: The Flower Fadeth
  • Chapter X: Richard in New Orleans
  • Chapter XXVII: Mrs. Butterworth's Revelation
  • Chapter XXIX: Convalescent
  • 29. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)
  • "Enlightened Motherhood: An Address Before the Brooklyn Literary Society, November 15, 1892"
  • Newfound Poems from Forest Leaves (ca. 1840)
  • "Haman and Mordecai"
  • "A Dream"
  • "The Felon's Dream"
  • Later Poems
  • "Eliza Harris"
  • "The Slave Auction"
  • "Lines"
  • "Bible Defense of Slavery"
  • "The Drunkard's Child"
  • "The Revel"
  • "Ethiopia"
  • "To Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe"
  • "The Fugitive's Wife"
  • "An Appeal to My Countrywomen"
  • 30. Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930)
  • Selections from Peculiar Sam, or, the Underground Railroad, a Musical Drama in Four Acts (1879)
  • Act III
  • Act IV
  • "Talma Gordon" (1900)
  • 31. Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (Kate D. Chapman) (1870-after 1922)
  • "A Question of To-day" (1889)
  • "Lines to Ida B. Wells" (1894)
  • "A Tribute to Negro Regiments" (1898)
  • 32. Amelia E. Johnson (ca. 1858-1922)
  • Selections from Clarence and Corinne, or God's Way (1890)
  • Chapter I: Discouraged
  • Chapter IV: Provided For
  • 33. Mary E. Ashe Lee (1850-1932)
  • "Afmerica" (1885)
  • 34. H. Cordelia Ray (1849-1916)
  • "Lincoln'" (1876)
  • "To My Father" (1893)
  • "Shakespeare"(1893)
  • "In Memoriam (Frederick Douglass)" (1897)
  • "William Lloyd Garrison" (1905)
  • 35. Sarah E. Farro (1859-after 1937)
  • Chapter I from True Love: A Story of English Domestic Life (1891)
  • 36. Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)
  • "The Woman" (1895)
  • "Amid the Roses" (1895)
  • "I Sit and Sew" (1918)
  • "Sonnet" (1919)
  • "To the Negro Farmers of the United States" (1920)
  • "To Madame Curie" (1921)
  • Women Addressing Women: Addresses and Essays
  • 37. Sarah J. Early (1825-1907)
  • "The Organized Efforts of the Colored Women of the South to Improve Their Condition" (1894)
  • 38. Lucy Craft Laney (1854-1933)
  • "The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman" (1899)
  • 39. Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944)
  • "The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Woman of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation" (1893)
  • 40. Virginia W. Broughton (1856-1934)
  • "Woman's Work" (1894)
  • 41. Anna Julia Cooper (1860-1964)
  • "Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race" (1886)
  • "Paper by Mrs. Anna J. Cooper" (1894)
  • 42. Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)
  • "The Progress of Colored Women" (1898)
  • "The Convict Lease System and the Chain Gangs" (1907)
  • 43. Mary V. Cook (1863-1945)
  • "Women's Place in the Work of the Denomination" (1887)
  • Education and Social Reform
  • 44. Julia Caldwell-Frazier (1863-1929)
  • "The Decisions of Time" (1889)
  • 45. Fanny M. Jackson Coppin (1837-1913)
  • "Commencement Address" (1876)
  • A Race's Progress
  • "Christmas Eve Story" (1880)
  • "A Plea for the Mission School" (1891)
  • "A Plea for Industrial Opportunity" (1879)
  • 46. Victoria Earle Matthews (1861-1907)
  • "The Value of Race Literature" (1895)
  • 47. Gertrude Bustill Mossell (1855-1948)
  • "Baby Bertha's Temperance Lesson" (1885)
  • "Will the Negro Share the Glory That Awaits Africa?" (1893)
  • 48. Amelia L. Tilghman (1856-1931)
  • "Dedicated to Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, of England" (1892)
  • 49. Josephine J. Turpin Washington (1861-1949)
  • "A Great Danger" (1884)
  • Annie Porter Excoriated
  • "The Province of Poetry" (1889)
  • "Needs of Our Newspapers: Some Reasons for Their Existence"(1889)
  • "Anglo Saxon Supremacy" (1890)
  • 50. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
  • "Our Women" (1887)
  • "The Requirements of Southern Journalism" (1893)
  • "Lynch Law and the Color Line" (1893)
  • "Our Country's Lynching Record" (1913)
  • "The Ordeal of the 'Solitary': Mrs. Barnett Protests Against It" (1915)
  • Women Memorializing Women
  • 51. S. Elizabeth Frazier (1864-1924)
  • "Some Afro-American Women of Mark" (1892)
  • 52. Lucy Wilmot Smith (1861-1890)
  • "Women as Journalists: Portraits and Sketches of a Few of the Women Journalists of the Race" (1889)
Review by New York Times Review

"The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers," a new anthology published by Penguin Classics, features the work of 52 writers from before, during and after the Civil War. It includes poetry, fiction and memoir; essays about life under slavery and life after slavery; explicitly political pieces addressing emancipation, education and other urgent issues. In the introduction, the book's editors, Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates Jr., write: "These texts speak to the fact that feminism and women's rights were far more institutionally ingrained throughout American - and African-American - life in the 19th century than was typically recorded." Or as Sarah J. Early wrote in 1894: "Hark! I hear the tramp of a million feet, and the sound of a million voices answer."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 30, 2017]
Review by Library Journal Review

A comprehensive anthology of 19th-century black American women writers from Sojourner Truth to Ella Sheppard to Harriet Jacobs, edited by powerhouse scholars Gates (Yale Univ.) and Robbins (Johns Hopkins). © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.