Reviews for Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892

The average rating for Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-30 00:00:00 Mario Stanisic Major Fields: 10/133 Covers the major historical, literary, and political context of pre-20th century black women writers including those on my list: Wheatley, Wilson, Jacobs, Harper, and Wells. Discusses the characteristics of colonial, antebellum, reconstruction, and nadir literature and how black women responded to the changing social and political climate. Also contains a sustained interrogation of the Cult of True Womanhood and how it appears and is challenged in these texts (particular attention to the "tragic mulatta" trope). Covers the intellectual lineage of the field of African American literature, women's literature specifically, including by Hazel Carby, Jean Fagan Yellin, Robert Stepto, and others. Responding to Christian's _Black Women Novelists_ of 1980 and Washington's _Invented Lives_ of 1987.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-09-09 00:00:00 Anthony White I quit after half of the book, I needed the theory, not the long examples. It's easy to read and understand, but at the same time the information is dense. Suspense as it pertain to formula stories is explained from all angles in a conversational style that blends theoretic vocabulary with examples from popular fiction and film.