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 Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members.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. |
Từ bên trong sách
Kết quả 1-5 trong 88
... African American literacy in the nineteenth century . But while they are the most familiar , they are not the only ... black people , " free blacks in the urban North realized the urgency of creating their own opportunities to become ...
... African Americans increasingly visi- ble , the reading practices of free blacks in the antebellum North and the literary activities of black Americans generally after the Civil War have remained largely invisible . Students of African ...
... black community . Assumptions about African American illiteracy continue to play a part in preventing the widespread recognition of the complexity of the history of African American literacy and literary interaction ; but this has not ...
... black vernacular to African American literature and cultural production.12 This work has been critical and salutary. But celebrations of the black oral tradition and black vernacular have also unwittingly undermined historical evidence ...
... black literary tradition by attending to the many , diverse elements that form the groundwork of any tradition . The ... African American liter- ary and cultural history , especially in the antebellum period , is itself daunting , and ...
Nội dung
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 |