Written by Herself

by Foster, Frances Smith

• ISBN13: 9780253207869
• ISBN10: 025320786X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-06-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"...substantial contribution to African-American Studies and women's studies." -- Mississippi Quarterly"A bravura performance by an accomplished scholar... it strikes a perfect balance between insightful literary analysis and historical investigation." -- Eighteenth-Century Studies"... an impressive study of a wide range of writers.... Foster's work is both scholarly and accessible. Her prose is economical and direct, making this book enjoyable as well as instructive." -- Belles Lettres"... an impressively wide-ranging discussion of texts and contexts... " -- Signs"Foster has written a fine book that provides the reader with a context for understanding the importance of the written word for women who chose to 'set the record straight'." -- Journal of American History"... fascinating, meticulously researched... Likely to prove seminal in the field... highly recommended... " -- Library Journal"Written by Herself comprises a volume of remarkable female characters whose desires for social change often made them catalysts for spiritual awakening in their own times." -- MultiCultural Review"... an outstanding piece of scholarship... Foster's book offers deeply intelligent, provocative, totally accessible analysis of a tradition and of writers still not sufficiently read and taught." -- American Literature"Well written and thoroughly researched. Highly recommended... " -- ChoiceThe first comprehensive cultural history of literature by African American women prior to the 20th century. From the oral histories of Alice, a slave born in 1686, to the literary tradition that included Jarena Lee and Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert, this literature was argument, designed to correct or to instruct an audience often ignorant about or even hostile to black women.

Author Biography

FRANCES SMITH FOSTER, Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of Witnessing Slavery: The Development of the Ante-bellum Slave Narrative and editor of A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Testing and Testifying: The Word, the Other, and African American Women Writers	p. 1
""""Sometimes by Simile, a Victory's Won"""": Lucy Terry Prince and Phillis Wheatley	p. 23
Equal Men but True Women: The Post-Revolution Literature	p. 44
""""Great Liberty in the Gospel"""": Jarena Lee's Religious Experiences, Life, and Journal	p. 56
Gendered Writing for Promiscuous Audiences: African American Women's Literature in the Antebellum Period	p. 76
Writing Across the Color Line: Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl	p. 95
Romance and Scandal in a Postbellum Slave Narrative: Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes	p. 117
Doers of the Word: The Reconstruction Poetry of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper	p. 131
Confrontation and Community in Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert's the House of Bondage	p. 154
""""A Woman Question and a Race Problem"""": The Black Woman's Era	p. 178
Notes	p. 191
Index	p. 200
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