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.
Autobiography of a People is an insightfully assembled anthology of eyewitness accounts that traces the history of the African American experience.
149–53; see also, William L. Andrews, “Frederick Douglass, Preacher,” American Literature 54 (Dec. ... exemplifies the paternalism of white reformers other than Garrison in a series of anecdotes in My Bondage and My Freedom, pp.
This collection from the rich literature of African American autobiography documents the experience of being black in America, from slavery to present day, in the words of Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, and forty other contributors.
A collection of the best critical essays reflecting both older and newer perspectives. Will also contain an introduction by the editor (a respected scholar in the field), a chronology...
For those interested in the history of slavery and the American Civil War, 'Up from Slavery' is the autobiography from American eudcator Booker T. Washington in which he describes his experiences of living as an enslaved child during the ...
This edition of Grimes's autobiography represents a historic partnership between noted scholar of the African American slave narrative, William L. Andrews, and Regina Mason, Grimes's great-great-great-granddaughter.
The book contains the biography of an American bondman William Wells Brown, which was written by his daughter Josephine Brown.
Race and Nationality in American Life. Little, Brown & Company, Toronto, 1957. Lowe, Jeanne R. Cities in a Race with Time. Random House, New York, 1967. McKay, David H. Housing and Race in Industrial Society. Croom Helm, London, 1977.
God Struck Me Dead: Voices of Ex-Slaves. ... God Is Not a Christian, nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu: God Dwells with Us, in Us, around Us, ... Hell without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative.
William Wells Brown spent the first twenty years of his life mainly in St. Louis and the surrounding areas working as a house servant, field hand, a tavern keeper's assistant, a printer's helper, an assistant in a medical office, and a ...