Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary SocietiesDuke University Press, 31 thg 10, 2002 - 440 trang Over the past decade the popularity of black writers including E. Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan has been hailed as an indication that an active African American reading public has come into being. Yet this is not a new trend; there is a vibrant history of African American literacy, literary associations, and book clubs. Forgotten Readers reveals that neglected past, looking at the reading practices of free blacks in the antebellum north and among African Americans following the Civil War. It places the black upper and middle classes within American literary history, illustrating how they used reading and literary conversation as a means to assert their civic identities and intervene in the political and literary cultures of the United States from which they were otherwise excluded. Forgotten Readers expands our definition of literacy and urges us to think of literature as broadly as it was conceived of in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members. She examines particular literary associations, including the Saturday Nighters of Washington, D.C., whose members included Jean Toomer and Georgia Douglas Johnson. She shows how black literary societies developed, their relationship to the black press, and the ways that African American women’s clubs—which flourished during the 1890s—encouraged literary activity. In an epilogue, McHenry connects this rich tradition of African American interest in books, reading, and literary conversation to contemporary literary phenomena such as Oprah Winfrey’s book club. |
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Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies Elizabeth McHenry. University, my current academic ... Boston Public Library, the Widener Library (Harvard University), the Mugar Library (Boston University), the Beineke ...
Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies Elizabeth McHenry. print as technologies of power ... Boston Literary and Historical Association. At a time when direct political agitation seemed hopeless, both organiza ...
Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies Elizabeth McHenry. WRITING ... Boston , for dis- tributing “ some pamphlets of a very seditious ... Boston , ” Smith reported , " a colored man of decent appearance & very ...
Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies Elizabeth ... Boston , what Smith carried to Charleston aboard the Columbo were copies of ... Boston in 1829 by its author , David Walker , the Appeal delivered a furious ...
Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies Elizabeth ... Boston . By “ making public , ” I refer specifi- cally to the two public ... literary 13 circulated but , as the example of Edward Smith illustrates. text ...
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1 | |
23 | |
The Cultural Work of the Black Press | 84 |
3 Literary Coalitions in the Age of Washington | 141 |
4 Reading Writing and Reform in the Womans Era | 187 |
5 Georgia Douglas Johnson and the Saturday Nighters | 251 |
Building Community in Contemporary Reading Groups | 297 |
Notes | 317 |
Bibliography | 387 |
Index | 401 |