Rhetoric And Resistance In Black Womens Autobiography

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Rhetoric and Resistance in Black Women's Autobiography

Author : Johnnie M. Stover
Publisher : Orange Grove Texts Plus
ISBN 13 : 9781616101350
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetoric and Resistance in Black Women's Autobiography by : Johnnie M. Stover

Download or read book Rhetoric and Resistance in Black Women's Autobiography written by Johnnie M. Stover and published by Orange Grove Texts Plus. This book was released on 2009-09-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johnnie M. Stover explores the origin and power of black women writers' voices using the personal narratives of 19th-century Americans who were slaves or indentured servants. Displaying aspects of the oral traditions of Yoruba culture in West Africa, these voices took on a subversive tone, a form of expression that Stover describes as the "mother tongue" and argues is completely different from literary forms employed by white men or women or black men. Stover maintains that the mother tongue--a system of linguistic and physical techniques--developed in response to black women's struggles to find outlets for expression in a white male dominated society. The African American mother tongue is not a result of biology but grew out of the need of black women to resist oppression. It is a combination of words, rhythms, sounds, and silences that black women encoded with veiled meanings. Moreover, it is a physical way of communicating--a look, a set of the lips, a positioning of the hand, hip, and head. It is a stance, an attitude of resistance, and a powerful force in social and political as well as literary life. She proposes that the linguistic practices are a balance of African, European, and African American communicative techniques and include secrets, silences, hesitations, whispers, feigned misunderstanding, lying, masking, mumbling, sass, invective, impudence, and dissembling. Stover focuses on four texts that employ the mother tongue and engage sociopolitical issues of the 19th century--Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes, and Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp. Rhetoric and Resistancewill affect the way African American women's autobiography is read today and will be valuable to scholoars interested in linguistics and 19th-century literature and in African American, multicultural, and women's studies.

EXPRESSION OF SELF-EMANCIPATION A Study of Black Women's Autobiographies

Author : Dr. Bharat Arvind Tupere
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 179488064X
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (948 download)

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Book Synopsis EXPRESSION OF SELF-EMANCIPATION A Study of Black Women's Autobiographies by : Dr. Bharat Arvind Tupere

Download or read book EXPRESSION OF SELF-EMANCIPATION A Study of Black Women's Autobiographies written by Dr. Bharat Arvind Tupere and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

California Dreams and American Contradictions

Author : Monique McDade
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1496235290
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (962 download)

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Book Synopsis California Dreams and American Contradictions by : Monique McDade

Download or read book California Dreams and American Contradictions written by Monique McDade and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023-03 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California Dreams and American Contradictions establishes a genealogy of western American women writers publishing between 1870 and 1965 to argue that both white women and women of color regionalized dominant national literary trends to negotiate the contradictions between an American liberal individualism and American equality. Monique McDade analyzes works by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Helen Hunt Jackson, Sui Sin Far, and a previously unstudied African American writer, Eva Rutland, to trace an archive of western American women writers who made visible what dominant genres subsumed under images of American progress and westward expansion. Read together these writers provide new entry points into the political debates that have plagued the United States since the nation's founding and that set the precedent for westward expansion. Their romances, regional sketches, memoirs, and journalism point to the inherently antagonistic relationship between a Rooseveltian rugged individualism that encouraged an Anglo male-dominated West and the progressive equality and opportunity the West seemingly promised disenfranchised citizens. The writers included in California Dreams and American Contradictions challenged literature's role in creating regional division, conformist communities that support nationally sponsored images of gendered, ethnic, and immigrant others, and liberal histories validated through a strategic vocabulary rooted in "freedom," "equality," and "progress."

Performing Autobiography

Author : Katrina M. Powell
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030645983
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Performing Autobiography by : Katrina M. Powell

Download or read book Performing Autobiography written by Katrina M. Powell and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performing Auto/biography: Narrating a Life as Activism analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed in five authors’ auto/biographical texts, examining their representations of identities and the public implications of writing individual identity. Exploring the ways race, class, culture, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality might affect the form(s) in which writers choose to write (e.g., memoir, fictional autobiography, poetry), questions how autobiographers challenge notions of genre, truth, and representation. This builds on the argument that constructing identity is a Performing Autobiography performance, one that can simultaneously use and subvert traditional notions of rhetoric and genre. By examining the auto/biographical texts of Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Johnson, and Shirley Geok-lin Lim together, the book theorizes self-representation and genres as rhetorical performances, and therefore their texts can be seen as “performative auto/biography”—transgressive archives where readers are asked to consider their own identities and act accordingly. In doing so, this book contributes to growing theories in feminist rhetorics and auto/biography studies, arguing that these performative genres advocate for life narratives as political and social activism.

Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics

Author : Patricia Bizzell
Publisher : Modern Language Association
ISBN 13 : 1603295224
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics by : Patricia Bizzell

Download or read book Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics written by Patricia Bizzell and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century the United States was ablaze with activism and reform: people of all races, creeds, classes, and genders engaged with diverse intellectual, social, and civic issues. This cutting-edge, revelatory book focuses on rhetoric that is overtly political and oriented to social reform. It not only contributes to our historical understanding of the period by covering a wide array of contexts--from letters, preaching, and speeches to labor organizing, protests, journalism, and theater by white and Black women, Indigenous people, and Chinese immigrants--but also relates conflicts over imperialism, colonialism, women's rights, temperance, and slavery to today's struggles over racial justice, sexual freedom, access to multimodal knowledge, and the unjust effects of sociopolitical hierarchies. The editors' introduction traces recent scholarship on activist rhetorics and the turn in rhetorical theory toward the work of marginalized voices calling for radical social change.

Telling Political Lives

Author : Brenda DeVore Marshall
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1461634253
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (616 download)

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Book Synopsis Telling Political Lives by : Brenda DeVore Marshall

Download or read book Telling Political Lives written by Brenda DeVore Marshall and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008-06-24 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the autobiographical writings of Barbara Jordan, Patricia Schroeder, Geraldine Ferraro, Elizabeth Dole, Wilma Mankiller, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Christine Todd Whitman. These eight women represent the diversity that permeates the cultural backgrounds, life adventures, and ideologies women bring to the political table. From differences in race, class, and geographic location, to variations in personal and family experiences, religious beliefs, and political ideology, these women illustrate many of the divergent standpoints from which women craft their lives in the United States. Each essay focuses on the autobiographical text as political discourse and therefore, as an appropriate site for the rhetorical construction of a personal and civic self situated within local and national political communities. The collection examines issues such as the intersection between the "politicization of the private and the personalization of the public" evident in the women's narratives; the description of U.S. politics the women provide in their writings; the ways in which the women's personal stories craft arguments about their political ideologies; the strategies these women leaders employ in navigating the gendered double-binds of politics; and, the manner in which the women's discourse serves to encourage, instruct, and empower future women leaders. The analyses embody and explicate the political and rhetorical strategies these leaders employ in their efforts to act on their convictions, highlight the need for and reality of women's involvement in all levels of politics, and serve as an impetus and inspiration for scholars and activists alike.

Michelle Obama

Author : Elizabeth J. Natalle
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498512224
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Michelle Obama by : Elizabeth J. Natalle

Download or read book Michelle Obama written by Elizabeth J. Natalle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor is an edited anthology that explores the persona and speech-making of the country’s first African American first lady. The result of these thought-provoking essays is an interdisciplinary text that explores the First Lady from a rhetorical and cultural point of view. Authors analyze her Democratic National Convention speeches, her brand as First Lady, her communication from her latest trip to Africa, her agenda rhetoric in Let’s Move! and Reach Higher, and her coming out as a Black feminist intellectual when she spoke at Maya Angelou’s memorial service. Readers will recognize Michelle Obama as a rhetor of our times—a woman who influences America at the intersections of gender, race, and class and who is representative of what women are today.

Race, Gender and Politics in Michelle Obama’s Autobiography "Becoming". An African American Women's Autobiography and First Lady Memoir

Download Race, Gender and Politics in Michelle Obama’s Autobiography

Author : Dianne Petrov
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3346339378
Total Pages : 45 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (463 download)

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Book Synopsis Race, Gender and Politics in Michelle Obama’s Autobiography "Becoming". An African American Women's Autobiography and First Lady Memoir by : Dianne Petrov

Download or read book Race, Gender and Politics in Michelle Obama’s Autobiography "Becoming". An African American Women's Autobiography and First Lady Memoir written by Dianne Petrov and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2021-02-03 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bachelor Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies - Literature, University of Luxembourg, language: English, abstract: This BA dissertation is dedicated to the genre of autobiographies, also known as life writing. It focuses on Michelle Obama's 2018 memoir "Becoming" and discusses both the traditions of African-American female autobiographies and the political memoir genre. "Becoming" permits Obama to tell her own story to set the record straight. It gives her the opportunity to rewrite her story and define her own identity for herself. Writing as a former political figure–the First Lady of the United States of America, Obama does not refrain from incorporating her personal life as well as a personal message. As a former First Lady, "Becoming" can be understood as being part of the genre of the First Lady memoir. As such, Obama’s autobiography can be defined as an intersection between African American women’s autobiographies and the genre of First Lady memoir which have both been largely excluded from the literary canon. Thus, Obama constitutes a minority within a minority as she is not only a First Lady, but she is the nation’s only African American First Lady. Moreover, Obama constitutes a political observer and having written one of the most valuable autobiographies of the twenty-first century, she illustrates how despite the fact that African Americans have largely been excluded from American politics, her autobiography demonstrates the progress America has made by electing its first African American president. In this thesis, it is my contention that Obama’s autobiography "Becoming" constructs an amalgamation between African American women’s life writing and the autobiographical sub-genre of the First Lady memoir. African American women autobiographers construct a self that has, as Terrell puts it, two central handicaps – gender and race. This statement from the 20th century captures the intersectionality of African American women’s identities. In her autobiography "Becoming", Michelle Obama shows her awareness of her intersectional identity as she writes ‘I’ve been the only woman, the only African American, in all sorts of rooms’. Thus, the tradition of African American women’s autobiographies requires a suitable theoretical framework when examining their texts.

A Poetics of Arabic Autobiography

Author : Ariel M. Sheetrit
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000052435
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis A Poetics of Arabic Autobiography by : Ariel M. Sheetrit

Download or read book A Poetics of Arabic Autobiography written by Ariel M. Sheetrit and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the poetics of autobiographical masterpieces written in Arabic by Leila Abouzeid, Hanan al-Shaykh, Samuel Shimon, Abd al-Rahman Munif, Salim Barakat, Mohamed Choukri and Hanna Abu Hanna. These literary works articulate the life story of each author in ways that undermine the expectation that the "self"—the "auto" of autobiography—would be the dominant narrative focus. Although every autobiography naturally includes and relates to others to one degree or another, these autobiographies tend to foreground other characters, voices, places and texts to the extent that at times it appears as though the autobiographical subject has dropped out of sight, even to the point of raising the question: is this an autobiography? These are indeed autobiographies, Sheetrit argues, albeit articulating the story of the self in unconventional ways. Sheetrit offers in-depth literary studies that expose each text’s distinct strategy for life narrative. Crucial to this book’s approach is the innovative theoretical foundation of relational autobiography that reveals the grounding of the self within the collective—not as symbolic of it. This framework exposes the intersection of the story of the autobiographical subject with the stories of others and the tensions between personal and communal discourse. Relational strategies for self-representation expose a movement between two seemingly opposing desires—the desire to separate and dissociate from others, and the desire to engage and integrate within a particular relationship, community, culture or milieu. This interplay between disentangling and conscious entangling constitutes the leitmotif that unites the studies in this book.

Women’s Human Rights in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Author : Elena V. Shabliy
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793631425
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Women’s Human Rights in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture by : Elena V. Shabliy

Download or read book Women’s Human Rights in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture written by Elena V. Shabliy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-08-24 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women’s Human Rights in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture sheds light on women's rights advancements in the nineteenth century and early twentieth-century through explorations of literature and culture from this time period. With an international emphasis, contributors illuminate the range and diversity of women’s work as novelists, journalists, and short story writers and analyze the New Woman phenomenon, feminist impulse, and the diversity of the women writers. Studying writing by authors such as Alice Meynell, Thomas Hardy, Netta Syrett, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Seacole, Charlotte Brontë, and Jean Rhys, the contributors analyze women’s voices and works on the subject of women’s rights and the representation of the New Woman.

A History of African American Autobiography

Author : Joycelyn Moody
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108875661
Total Pages : 724 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of African American Autobiography by : Joycelyn Moody

Download or read book A History of African American Autobiography written by Joycelyn Moody and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-22 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This History explores innovations in African American autobiography since its inception, examining the literary and cultural history of Black self-representation amid life writing studies. By analyzing the different forms of autobiography, including pictorial and personal essays, editorials, oral histories, testimonials, diaries, personal and open letters, and even poetry performance media of autobiographies, this book extends the definition of African American autobiography, revealing how people of African descent have created and defined the Black self in diverse print cultures and literary genres since their arrival in the Americas. It illustrates ways African Americans use life writing and autobiography to address personal and collective Black experiences of identity, family, memory, fulfillment, racism and white supremacy. Individual chapters examine scrapbooks as a source of self-documentation, African American autobiography for children, readings of African American persona poems, mixed-race life writing after the Civil Rights Movement, and autobiographies by African American LGBTQ writers.

The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature

Author : Angelyn Mitchell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521858887
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (218 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature by : Angelyn Mitchell

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature written by Angelyn Mitchell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature covers a period dating back to the eighteenth century. These specially commissioned essays highlight the artistry, complexity and diversity of a literary tradition that ranges from Lucy Terry to Toni Morrison. A wide range of topics are addressed, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement, and from the performing arts to popular fiction. Together, the essays provide an invaluable guide to a rich, complex tradition of women writers in conversation with each other as they critique American society and influence American letters. Accessible and vibrant, with the needs of undergraduate students in mind, this Companion will be of great interest to anybody who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of this important and vital area of American literature.

Writing African American Women [2 volumes]

Author : Elizabeth A. Beaulieu
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313024626
Total Pages : 1035 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing African American Women [2 volumes] by : Elizabeth A. Beaulieu

Download or read book Writing African American Women [2 volumes] written by Elizabeth A. Beaulieu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 1035 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women have had a complex experience in African American culture. The first work of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective. While Yolanda Williams Page's Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers provides biographical entries on more than 150 literary figures, this book is much broader in scope. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries on African American women writers, as well as on male writers who have treated women in their works. Entries on genres, periods, themes, characters, historical events, texts, places, and other topics are included as well. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and relates its subject to the overall experience of women in African American literature. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. African American culture is enormously diverse, and the experience of women in African American society is especially complex. Women were among the first African American writers, and works by black women writers are popular among students and general readers alike. At the same time, African American women have been oppressed, and texts by black male authors represent women in a variety of ways. The first of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective, and thus significantly illuminates the African American cultural experience through literary works. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, written by numerous expert contributors. In addition to covering male and female African American authors, the encyclopedia also discusses themes, major works and characters, genres, periods, historical events, places, and other topics. Included are entries on such authors as: ; Maya Angelou ; James Baldwin ; Frederick Douglass ; Nikki Giovanni ; June Jordan ; Claude McKay ; Ishmael Reed ; Sojourner Truth ; Phillis Wheatley ; And many others. In addition, the many works discussed include: ; Beloved ; Blanche on the Lam ; Iknow Why the Caged Bird Sings ; The Men of Brewster Place ; Quicksand ; The Street ; Waiting to Exhale ; And many more. The many topical entries cover: ; Black Feminism ; Black Nationalism ; Conjuring ; Children's and Young Adult Literature ; Detective Fiction ; Epistolary Novel ; Motherhood ; Sexuality ; Spirituality ; Stereotypes ; And many others. Entries relate their topics to the experience of African American women and cite works for further reading. Features and Benefits: ; Includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries. ; Draws on the work of numerous expert contributors. ; Includes a selected, general bibliography. ; Offers a range of finding aids, such as a list of entries, a guide to related topics, and an extensive index. ; Supports the literature curriculum by helping students analyze major writers and works. ; Supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to understand the experience of African American women. ; Covers the full chronological range of African American literature. ; Fosters a respect for cultural diversity. ; Develops research skills by directing students to additional sources of information. ; Builds bridges between African American history, literature, and Women's Studies.

(Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph

Author : Rita Liberti
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815653077
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

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Book Synopsis (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph by : Rita Liberti

Download or read book (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph written by Rita Liberti and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-29 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilma Rudolph was born black in Jim Crow Tennessee. The twentieth of 22 children, she spent most of her childhood in bed suffering from whooping cough, scarlet fever, and pneumonia. She lost the use of her left leg due to polio and wore leg braces. With dedication and hard work, she became a gifted runner, earning a track and field scholarship to Tennessee State. In 1960, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games. Her underdog story made her into a media darling, and she was the subject of countless articles, a television movie, children’s books, biographies, and she even featured on a U.S. postage stamp. In this work, Smith and Liberti consider not only Rudolph’s achievements, but also the ways in which those achievements are interpreted and presented as historical fact. Theories of gender, race, class, and disability collide in the story of Wilma Rudolph, and Smith and Liberti examine this collision in an effort to more fully understand how history is shaped by the cultural concerns of the present. In doing so, the authors engage with the metanarratives which define the American experience and encourage more complex and nuanced interrogations of contemporary heroic legacy.

Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers [2 volumes]

Author : Yolanda Williams Page
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313049076
Total Pages : 725 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers [2 volumes] by : Yolanda Williams Page

Download or read book Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers [2 volumes] written by Yolanda Williams Page and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American women writers published extensively during the Harlem Renaissance and have been extraordinarily prolific since the 1970s. This book surveys the world of African American women writers. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on more than 150 novelists, poets, playwrights, short fiction writers, autobiographers, essayists, and influential scholars. The Encyclopedia covers established contemporary authors such as Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, along with a range of neglected and emerging figures. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a brief biography, a discussion of major works, a survey of the author's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Literature students will value this book for its exploration of African American literature, while social studies students will appreciate its examination of social issues through literature. African American women writers have made an enormous contribution to our culture. Many of these authors wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, a particularly vital time in African American arts and letters, while others have been especially active since the 1970s, an era in which works by African American women are adapted into films and are widely read in book clubs. Literature by African American women is important for its aesthetic qualities, and it also illuminates the social issues which these authors have confronted. This book conveniently surveys the lives and works of African American women writers. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on more than 150 African American women novelists, poets, playwrights, short fiction writers, autobiographers, essayists, and influential scholars. Some of these figures, such as Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, are among the most popular authors writing today, while others have been largely neglected or are recently emerging. Each entry provides a biography, a discussion of major works, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The Encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students and general readers will welcome this guide to the rich achievement of African American women. Literature students will value its exploration of the works of these writers, while social studies students will appreciate its examination of the social issues these women confront in their works.

Words of Witness

Author : Angela A. Ards
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN 13 : 029930504X
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Words of Witness by : Angela A. Ards

Download or read book Words of Witness written by Angela A. Ards and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2015 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary and political genealogy of the last half-century, Words of Witness explores black feminist autobiographical narratives--in particular by June Jordan, Edwidge Danticat, Melba Beals, Rosemary Bray, and Eisa Davis--in the context of activism and history since the landmark 1954 segregation case, Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Black Women Writing Autobiography

Author : Joanne M. Braxton
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780877226390
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Women Writing Autobiography by : Joanne M. Braxton

Download or read book Black Women Writing Autobiography written by Joanne M. Braxton and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As black American women, we are born into a mystic sisterhood, and we live our lives within a magic circle, a realm of shared language, reference, and allusion within the veil of our blackness and our femaleness. We have been as invisible to the dominant culture as rain; we have been knowers, but we have not been known." Joanne Braxton argues for a redefinition of the genre of black American autobiography to include the images of women as well as their memoirs, reminiscences, diaries, and journals—as a corrective to both black and feminist literary criticism. Beginning with slave narratives and concluding with modern autobiography, she deals with individual works as representing stages in a continuum and situates these works in the context of other writings by both black and white writers. Braxton demonstrates that the criteria used to define the slave narrative genre are inadequate for analyzing Harriet "Linda Brent" Jacobs's pseudonymously publishedIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself(1861). She examines "sass" as a mode of women's discourse and a weapon of self-defense, and she introduces the "outraged mother" as a parallel to the articulate hero archetype. Not even emancipation authorized black women to define themselves or address an audience. Late-nineteenth-century accounts in the form of confessional spiritual autobiographies, travelogue/adventure stories, and slave memoirs enabled such women as Jarena Lee, Rebecca Cox Jackson, Elizabeth Keckley, Susie King Taylor, as well as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth to tell their own extraordinary stories and to shed light on the thousands of lives obscured by illiteracy and sexual and racial oppression. In her diaries, Charlotte Forten Grimké, the gifted poet, epitomizes the problems faced by a well-educated, extremely articulate black woman attempting to find a public voice in America. Moving into the twentieth century, Braxton analyzes the memoir of Ida B. Wells, journalist and anti-lynching activist, and the work of Zora Neale Hurston and Era Bell Thompson. They represent the first generation of black female autobiographers who did not continually come into contact with former slaves and who transcended the essential struggle for survival that occupied earlier writings. For the contemporary black woman autobiographer, the quest for personal fulfillment is the central theme. Braxton concludes with Maya Angelou'sI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings(1996), which represents the black woman of the 1960s who has found the place to recreate the self in her own image—the place all the others had been searching for. Author note:Joanne M. Braxtonis Cummings Professor of American Studies and English at the College of William and Mary and author ofSometimes I think of Maryland, a collection of poems.