Freedom Narratives of African American Women - by Janaka Bowman Lewis (Paperback)

About the Book

"Stories of liberation from enslavement or oppression have become central to African American women's literature. An examination of the collective free identity of black women and their relationships to the community focuses on education, individual progress, marriage and family, labor, intellectual commitments and community rebuilding projects"--

Book Synopsis

Stories of liberation from enslavement or oppression have become central to African American women's literature. Beginning with a discussion of black women freedom narratives as a literary genre, the author argues that these texts represent a discourse on civil rights that emerged earlier than the ideas of racial uplift that culminated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An examination of the collective free identity of black women and their relationships to the community focuses on education, individual progress, marriage and family, labor, intellectual commitments and community rebuilding projects.

Review Quotes

"In this compelling book, Lewis explores freedom narratives written by African American women from 1861 to the 1890s.... Crucially contributing to feminist recovery work and scholarship in African American studies, Freedom Narratives of African American Women is required reading for those interested in 19th-century America.... essential"-Choice

About the Author

Janaka Bowman Lewis is an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has published on Elizabeth Keckley and other African American women writers of the nineteenth century. Currently, she researches Black girlhood and material culture.