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    Activist Sentiments
    Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century

    P. Gabrielle Foreman (Author)

    9780252034749

    Hardback, published 18 August 2009

    280 pages, 7 black & white photographs
    22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.567 kg

    "Recommended."--Choice

    "A bold work of literary activism."--Legacy
    "A wonderful piece of scholarship."--Southern Historian
    "A breathtaking and brilliant book."--Signs "Activist Sentiments reevaluates with a savvy, critical eye the nexus of sex, sentiment, and reform that distinguishes classic nineteenth-century African American women's narratives. Always informative, consistently revealing, and invitingly written, Foreman's book belongs in the company of the major studies in this field by Frances Smith Foster, Hazel Carby, Claudia Tate, and Carla L. Peterson."--William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina, and coeditor of The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride: A Rediscovered African American Novel by Julia C. Collins "Foreman rereads nineteenth-century women writers with fresh eyes, vividly demonstrating how they were interpreted both then and now. She asks that we heed Frances Harper's admonition to 'read aright.' Activist Sentiments does just that."--Carla L. Peterson, author of "Doers of the Word": African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880) "With key readings and startling acuity, Foreman's work will be very useful not only to literary scholars but also to historians of the black woman's era."--Rafia Zafar, author of We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature, 1760-1870 "In this stimulating and impressive work, Foreman provides astute readings of previously ignored work. This text makes a significant contribution to several areas of scholarship including American literature, history, women's studies, and black studies."--Jennifer DeVere Brody, author of Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity and Victorian Culture

    Activist Sentiments takes as its subject women who in fewer than fifty years moved from near literary invisibility to prolific productivity. Grounded in primary research and paying close attention to the historical archive, this book offers against-the-grain readings of the literary and activist work of Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Frances E. W. Harper, Victoria Earle Matthews and Amelia E. Johnson.

    Part literary criticism and part cultural history, Activist Sentiments examines nineteenth-century social, political, and representational literacies and reading practices. P. Gabrielle Foreman reveals how Black women's complex and confrontational commentary–often expressed directly in their journalistic prose and organizational involvement--emerges in their sentimental, and simultaneously political, literary production.

    Acknowledgments   ix
    A Note on Language   xv
    Introduction   1
    1. The Politics of Sex and Representation in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl   19

    Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Moe, Abuser, Victim, Ally, Foe?   21
    Confession and Commodities, Silence and Sale   24
    Sexual Truth, Testimony, and Tyranny   29
    Flint, Sands, and Willis: South to North, Daddies to Dandies   33
    Aunt Martha's Mask   36
    2. Naming Our Nig's Multivalent Mothers   43
    Extended Family: Aunties' Place and Property   51
    Ma' Nig and Maternal Abandonment   57
    Multivalent Mulattas and Legal Racing   60
    (Un)Trustworthy Narrators and Multiple Starts   65
    3. Reading White Slavery, Sexuality, and Embedded History in Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy   73
    Cultural Literacy, Legible Transcripts, and Reading "
    Aright"
    in the 1890s   76
    Forced Prostitution, Rape, and White Slavery's Double Meanings   80
    Ida B. Wells, Frances Harper, and the Two Iolas   90
    Martin Delany, Lucy A. Delaney, and Iola's Lucille Delany   96
    Petitioning Science, or Martin Delany and Dr. Frank, George and Lewis Latimer   102
    4. Reading/Photographs: Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins's Four Girls at Cottage City, Victoria Earle Matthews, and the Woman's Era   113
    Reading/Photographs   116
    Women's Clubs and Literary Critique   126
    The Woman's Era Photographic Bylines   129
    Victoria Earle and Vera Earle   132
    Optic History   137
    5. Home Protection, Literary Aggression, and Religious Defense in the Life and Writings of Amelia E. Johnson   138
    Public Standing and Civic Action of Amelia E. Johnson   141
    Women, the Law, and Baltimore's Brotherhood of Liberty   148
    Racial Inequalities, or Snatching the Whip and Switching the Script   157
    Temperance and Bad Parental Temperaments   164
    Coda: On Burials and Exhumations   173
    Notes   179
    Bibliography   221
    Index   241
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