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 Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members.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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... on the last printed page of this book . Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Abraham and Rebecca Stein Faculty Publication Fund of New York University , Department of English . For Mom and Dad, and Grandma and Pop.
... York University have shown me through their example what it means to work as a team toward common goals. In particular I wish to thank Mary Carruthers, John Guillory, Cyrus Patell, Mary Poovey, and Ross Posnock for their encouragement ...
... York City; to Eugenia Guinier, Dorothy Burnham, and those who gathered with them to talk about their reading on Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1996; and to Lois Anderson and the ''Ladies Who Love Books'' in Chapel Hill, North ...
... me nonetheless. It is to these four remarkable people that this book is dedicated, with love and appreciation. New York City, October 2001 forgotten readers Introduction in search of black readers No scene xiv Acknowledgments.
... York , and Boston . By “ making public , ” I refer specifi- cally to the two public spheres accessed by David Walker through the publication of the Appeal . Walker's Appeal was able to address not only his principal audience , the ...
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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 |