Black Women’s Activism

The Author: Rita B. Dandridge is Professor of English and Foreign Languages at Norfolk State University, and is the 1998 recipient of the Roy A. Woods Outstanding Teacher Award. She received her Ph.D. in literature at Howard University in Washington, D. C. In addition to publishing in journals, she is the author of Ann Allen Shockley (1987) and Black Women’s Blues: A Literary Anthology (1992).

«It is both useful and pleasing that Rita B. Dandridge’s study of historical romances honors a long-standing tradition in American literature of respecting literature that combines ‘utile’ and ‘dulce’. She combines factual contexts with accessible readings of text that too many intellectuals have too quickly dismissed as mere recreational reading. The result is that we joyfully learn more about some of today’s best-selling and most popular African American writers while we come to appreciate more clearly their innovative and radical interventions regarding race, class, and gender stereotypes of our past and of our present.» (Frances Smith Foster, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women’s Studies, Emory University)«This text is a thoughtful, scholarly, and valuable genre study that addresses the neglect of black women’s historical romances and the black activist’s role in this genre. Rita B. Dandridge’s study offers new insights and exciting alternative perspectives to scholars and students of African-American women’s literature.» (Freddy L. Thomas, Chair, Department of Languages and Literature, Virginia State University)