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 Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members.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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... writing it. Although I began this project after I had completed my doctoral dissertation, I owe a tremendous debt to those individuals at Stanford University without whose assistance I would never have completed graduate school. First ...
... writing. The staff and my colleagues at New 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 ...
... writing of this book it seemed as if I were the only one of my friends who was not formally a member of a book club or reading group; through the kindness of others, however, I participated in countless book club meetings, all of them ...
... writing. Chrissie brings tremendous energy to three of life's most demanding roles: mother, daughter, friend. And yet she always saves the time and the energy to be the best of sisters. In the most profound way we do indeed share in ...
... writing from African American history : the tremendous thirst for education dem- onstrated by freed slaves in the years following the Civil War . Before the war , every southern state except Tennessee prohibited the educa- tion of ...
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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 |