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 Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members.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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Kết quả 1-5 trong 52
... critical intelligence and the example of their scholarship continues to inspire me, but so too does their good humor, their spirit of friendship, and their willingness to participate in the thoroughly trivial conversations that we ...
... critical stimulation of their literary discussions but also the warmth and fellowship that surrounded them. Special thanks are due to Lana Turner and the membership of The Literary Society in New York City; to Eugenia Guinier, Dorothy ...
... critical eye, made this a better book than it otherwise would have been; equally important to it was his patience, generosity, and wit. I cherish our friendship. For countless long walks and phone calls, celebratory teas and birthday ...
... critical and salutary. But celebrations of the black oral tradition and black vernacular have also unwittingly undermined historical evidence that points to a long and complex history of African Americans' literary interaction, not only ...
... critical explorations of the middle and upper classes of black society and reevaluate the ways in which we have seen and judged their various responses to the hostile climate in which they lived and the racial injustices they faced. In ...
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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 |