Nineteenth-Century Black Women’s Literary Emergence

The Editor: SallyAnn H. Ferguson is Associate Professor of American and African American literature at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the editor of Charles W. Chesnutt: Selected Writings. She is also a two-term past president of The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (Melus).

• Contents: Introduction: «Evolutionary Sexuality, Spirituality, and Identity: 19th-Century Black Women’s Literary Emergence» – Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879): Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build (1831) (Short Essay) – Jarena Lee (1783-?): The Life and Religious Experiences of Jarena Lee, A Coloured Lady, Giving an Account of Her Call To Preach the Gospel. Revised and Corrected from the Original Manuscript, Written by Herself. (1836) (Short Spiritual Narrative) – Harriet E. Adams Wilson (1828?-1863?): From: Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North, Showing That Slavery’s Shadows Fall even There. By «Our Nig» (1859) (Short Novel) – Harriet A. Jacobs (1813-1897): From: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861) (Fugitive Slave Narrative) – Elizabeth Keckley (1818?-1907): From: Behind the Scenes: Elizabeth Keckley, Formerly a Slave, but More Recently Modiste, and Friend to Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868) (Short Postbellum Slave Narrative) – Frances E. Watkins Harper (1824-1911): «The Two Offers» (1859) (Short Story) – Charlotte L. Forten Grimké (1837-1914): «Life on the Sea Islands» (May and June, 1864) (Short Essay) – Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964): «Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race» From A Voice from the South (1892) (Short Essay) – Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931): Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892) (Short Essay) – Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958): Rachel: A Play in Three Acts (1920) (Short Play).

«‘Nineteenth-Century Black Women’s Literary Emergence’ invites scholars of the humanities to wake up and smell the Darwinian aroma wafting off of some of their most intellectually challenging themes. In this work SallyAnn H. Ferguson presents a provocative thesis. Women of African descent were subjected to slavery, rape, and ideological derision throughout American history, in part due to deeply ingrained biological imperatives within European American men. While this notion is not unfamiliar to students of evolutionary biology and human behavior, it is surprising to see this perspective arising ‘de novo’ within the spiritual writings of African American women. Dr. Ferguson demonstrates the startling parallels between the claims of these spiritual writings and ideas central to social subordination theory. This conclusion cannot help but spawn important new examinations of the literary history of African American women as well as more general studies into the social biology of oppression.» (Joseph L. Graves, Jr., Dean, University Studies, and Professor of Biological Sciences, North Carolina A&T State University; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science)«SallyAnn H. Ferguson’s ‘Nineteenth-Century Black Women’s Literary Emergence’ collects some of the most important writings by African American women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By framing these texts within a discourse of Afrocentric evolutionary theories, she provides readers with a provocative new lens through which to analyze the African American woman writer’s resistance to the ethnocentric colonizing of her mind and body for ‘scientific’ purposes. This collection is sure to stimulate debate among scholars and challenge all of us to reread these texts with a new consideration for their ability to challenge conventional ideas about evolutionary theories.» (Sharon M. Harris, Professor of English, University of Connecticut, Storrs)