Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

Title

This edition

"The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers" . Ed. Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin, 2017. xl+613 pp.

Table of contents

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. / What Is an African American Classic?
• Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. / Introduction
• Suggestions for further reading.

Personal Accounts of Abolition and Freedom:
• Anonymous / "Address to the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia, on Their First Anniversary: By a Member" (1832)
• Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883) / "Speech Delivered to Women's Rights Convention of Akron Ohio" (1851): "Anti-Slavery Bugle" version (1851) and Frances D. Gage version (1863)
• Sojourner Truth / Selections on Western Settlement from "Narrative of Sojourner Truth" (1875): Petition to Congress; "Truths from Sojourner Truth"; From the "New York Tribune": Sojourner Truth at Work [letter to editor]
• Mary Prince (ca. 1788-after 1833) / Excerpt from "The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave" (1831)
• Nancy Prince (1799-after 1856) / From "A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince" (1850)
• Maria W. Stewart (ca. 1803-1879) / "An Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall" (1833)
• Sarah Mapps Douglas (Zillah) (1806-1882) / "A Mother's Love" (1832)
• Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) / "The Loophole of Retreat" from "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1861)
• Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) / "The Secret History of Mrs. Lincoln's Wardrobe in New York," from "Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House" (1868)
• Eliza Potter (1820-after 1861) / "New Orleans," from "A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life" (1859)
• Harriet Wilson (1825-1900) / Selections from "Our Nig" (1859): Preface; Chapter I: Mag Smith, My Mother; Chapter XII: The Winding Up of the Matter
• Hannah Crafts/Bond (1826-after 1859) / Selections from "The Bondwoman's Narrative" (ca. 1858): Chapter 1: In Childhood; Chapter 13: A Turn of the Wheel
• Sarah Parker Redmond (1826-1894) / "The Negroes in the United States of America" (1862)
• Louisa Picquet (ca. 1829-1896) / "The Family Sold at Auction—Louisa Bought by a 'New Orleans Gentleman,' and What Came of It," from "The Octoroon" (1861)

Fugitives and Emigrants: Moving West and North:
• Mrs. John Little / "Mrs. John Little," from "The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada" (1856)
• Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893) / Selections from "A Plea for Emigration, or, Notes of Canada West" (1852): Settlements,--Dawn,--Elgin,--Institution,--Fugitive Home Political Rights—Election Law—Oath—Currency
• Jennie Carter (Semper Fidelis) (ca. 1830-1881) / "Letter from Nevada County: Mud Hill, September 2, 1868"; "Letter from Nevada County: Mud Hill, September 12, 1868"
• Abby Fisher (ca. 1832-after 1881) / Selections from "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc." (1881): Preface and Apology; Jumberlie—A Creole Dish; Oyster Gumbo Soup; Tonic Bitters—A Southern Remedy for Invalids; Sweet Cucumber Pickles; Pap for Infant Diet

Northern Women and the Post-War South:
• Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914) / "Life on the Sea Islands" (1864)
• Charlotte Forten Grimké / "Charles Sumner, On Seeing Some Pictures of the Interior of His House" (1874)
• Charlotte Forten Grimké / "The Gathering of the Grand Army" (1890)
• Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924) / "Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women" (1895)
• Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin / "An Open Letter to the Educational League of Georgia" (1889)
• Edmonia Goodelle Highgate (1844-1870) / "A Spring Day Up the James" (1865)
• Edmonia Goodelle Highgate / "Rainy-Day Ink Drops" (1865)
• Edmonia Goodelle Highgate / "Neglected Opportunities" (1866)
• Edmonia Goodelle Highgate / "On Horse Back—Saddle Dash, No. 1" (1866)
• Julia A. J. Foote (1823-1900) / Selections from "A Brand Plucked from the Fire" (1879): Chapter I: Birth and Parentage; Chapter IV: My Teacher Hung for Crime; Chapter XIX: Public Effort—Excommunication; Chapter XXII: A Visit to My Parents—Further Labors
• Jarena Lee (1783-1855) / Selection from "Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel" (1849): My Call to Preach the Gospel
• Zilpha Elaw (1790-after 1845) / Selection from "Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour" (1846)
• Lucy Delaney (ca. 1830-after 1891) / Selections from "From Darkness Cometh the Light" (1891): Chapter IV; Chapter V
• Ella Sheppard (1851-1914) / "Historical Sketch of the Jubilee Singers" (1911)

Poetry, Drama, and Fiction:
• Sarah Forten Purvis (Magawisca) (1814-1884) / "The Slave Girl's Address to Her Mother" (1831)
• Sarah Forten Purvis (Magawisca) / "The Abuse of Liberty" (1831)
• Sarah Forten Purvis (Magawisca) / "Lines" (1838)
• Ann Plato (ca. 1820-after 1841) / "Education" (1841)
• Ann Plato / "The Natives of America" (1841)
• Julia Collins (d. 1865) / Selections from "The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride" (1865): Chapter VI; Chapter VIII: The Flower Fadeth; Chapter X: Richard in New Orleans; Chapter XXVII: Mrs. Butterworth's Revelation; Chapter XXIX: Convalescent
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) / "Enlightened Motherhood: An Address Before the Brooklyn Literary Society, November 15, 1892"
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Newfound poems from "Forest Leaves" (ca. 1840): "Haman and Mordechai"; "A Dream"; "The Felon's Dream"
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Later Poems: "Eliza Harris"; "The Slave Auction"; "Lines"; "Bible Defense of Slavery"; "The Drunkard's Child"; "The Revel"; "Ethiopia"; "To Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe"; "The Fugitive's Wife"; "An Appeal to My Countrywomen"
• Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930) / Selections from "Peculiar Sum, or, the Underground Railroad", a Musical Drama in Four Acts (1879): Act III; Act IV
• Pauline Hopkins / "Talma Gordon" (1900)
• Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (Kate D. Chapman) (1870-after 1922) / "A Question of To-day" (1889)
• Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman / "Lines to Ida B. Wells" (1894)
• Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman / "A Tribute to Negro Regiments" (1898)
• Amelia E. Johnson (ca. 1858-1922) / Selections from "Clarence and Corinne, or God's Way" (1890): Chapter I: Discouraged; Chapter IV: Provided For
• Mary E. Ashe Lee (1850-1932) / "Afmerica" (1885)
• H. Cordelia Ray (1849-1916) / "Lincoln" (1876)
• H. Cordelia Ray / "To My Father" (1893)
• H. Cordelia Ray / "Shakespeare" (1893)
• H. Cordelia Ray / "In Memoriam (Frederick Douglass)" (1897)
• H. Cordelia Ray / "William Lloyd Garrison" (1905)
• Sarah E. Farro (1859-after 1937) / Selection from "True Love: A Story of English Domestic Life" (1891): Chapter I
• Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) / "The Woman" (1895)
• Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson / "Amid the Roses" (1895)
• Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson / "I Sit and Sew" (1918)
• Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson / "Sonnet" (1919)
• Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson / "To the Negro Farmers of the United States" (1920)
• Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson / "To Madame Curie" (1921)

Women Addressing Women: Addresses and Essays:
• Sarah J. Early (1825-1907) / "The Organized Effort of the Colored Women of the South to Improve Their Condition" (1894)
• Lucy Craft Laney (1854-1933) / "The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman" (1899)
• Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944) / "The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Woman of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation" (1893)
• Virginia W. Broughton (1856-1934) / "Woman's Work" (1894)
• Anna Julia Cooper (1860-1964) / "Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race" (1886)
• Anna Julia Cooper / "Paper by Mrs. Anna J. Cooper" (1894)
• Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) / "The Progress of Colored Women" (1898)
• Mary Church Terrell / "The Convict Lease System and the Chain Gangs" (1907)
• Mary V. Cook (1863-1945) / "Woman's Place in the Work of the Denomination" (1887)

Education and Social Reform:
• Julia Caldwell-Frazier (1863-1929) / "The Decisions of Time" (1889)
• Fanny M. Jackson Coppin (1837-1913) / "Commencement Address" (1876): A Race's Progress
• Fanny M. Jackson Coppin / "Christmas Eve Story" (1880)
• Fanny M. Jackson Coppin / "A Plea for the Mission School" (1891)
• Fanny M. Jackson Coppin / "A Plea for Industrial Opportunity" (1879)
• Victoria Earle Matthews (1861-1907) / "The Value of Race Literature" (1895)
• Gertrude Bustill Mossell (1855-1948) / "Baby Bertha's Temperance Lesson" (1885)
• Gertrude Bustill Mossell / "Will the Negro Share the Glory That Awaits Africa?" (1893)
• Amelia L. Tilghman (1856-1931) / "Dedicated to Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, of England" (1892)
• Josephine J. Turpin Washington (1861-1949) / "A Great Danger" (1884): Annie Porter Excoriated
• Josephine J. Turpin Washington / "The Province of Poetry" (1889)
• Josephine J. Turpin Washington / "Needs of Our Newspapers: Some Reasons for Their Existence" (1889)
• Josephine J. Turpin Washington / "Anglo-Saxon Supremacy" (1890)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) / "Our Women" (1887)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett / "The Requirements of Southern Journalism" (1893)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett / "Lynch Law and the Color Line" (1893)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett / "Our Country's Lynching Record" (1913)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett / "The Ordeal of the 'Solitary': Mrs. Barnett Protests Against It" (1915)

Women Memorializing Women:
• S. Elizabeth Frazier (1864-1924) / "Some Afro-American Women of Mark" (1892)
• Lucy Wilmot Smith (1861-1890) / "Women as Journalists: Portraits and Sketches of a Few of the Women Journalists of the Race" (1889)

About the anthology

• Includes 100+ items from 52 African American women writers. There is a headnote for each author and a note on the source for each selection.
• Cody Ernst, then an MFA student at Johns Hopkins (where Robbins teaches), worked as an editorial assistant on the volume.

Reviews and notices of anthology

• Valentine, Genevieve. "A 'Portable' Overview of a Complex, Compelling History." "NPR.org" 30 July 2017.

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/30/537086011/a-portable-overview-of-a-complex-compelling-history

""The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers" isn't an easy read. It is, however, a rewarding history, and a reminder that the past is never a single narrative. It's a conversation with itself and with the present, well worth having."

• Williams, John. "Going After Big Prey." "New York Times Book Review" 23 July 2017: 6. (Online 19 July 2017.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/books/review/shark-drunk-morten-stroksnes.html

"[This anthology] features the work of 52 writers from before, during and after the Civil War. It includes poetry, fiction and memoir; essays about life under slavery and life after slavery; explicitly political pieces addressing emancipation, education and other urgent issues.
"In the introduction, the book's editors, Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates Jr., write: 'These texts speak to the fact that feminism and women's rights were far more institutionally ingrained throughout American--and African-American--life in the 19th century than was typically recorded.' Or as Sarah Early wrote in 1894: 'Hark! I hear the tramp of a million feet, and the sound of a million voices answer.'"

• Stanley, Tarshia L. "What Makes an African-American Novel a Classic?" "Diverse Issues in Higher Education" 13 Dec. 2017.

http://diverseeducation.com/article/107048/

Stanley remarks on the excerpt in this anthology from Sarah E. Farro's "True Love": "Written in 1891, this Dickensian novel is unusual in that an African-American writer imagines White characters' lives but does not engage race." The inclusion of this work serves to broaden our sense of the range of 19th-century African-American women's writings, to include "work other than social protest."

Commentary on anthology

• Cowen, Tyler. "What I've Been Reading." "Marginal Revolution" 21 July 2017.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/07/what-ive-been-reading-104.html

Cowen says about the works collected in this anthology, "Plenty of libertarian thought in here, and many historical tidbits of interest, for instance [the discussion of the telegraph and the telephone in] Julia Caldwell-Frazier, 'The Decisions of Time' (1889)."

Anthologies of African American Writing

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