Nazera Sadiq Wright
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040573
- eISBN:
- 9780252099014
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040573.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter offers a reading of Frances E. W. Harper's novel Trial and Triumph, serialized in the newspaper Christian Recorder in 1888–1889. Trial and Triumph, believed to be an autobiography, tells ...
More
This chapter offers a reading of Frances E. W. Harper's novel Trial and Triumph, serialized in the newspaper Christian Recorder in 1888–1889. Trial and Triumph, believed to be an autobiography, tells the story of a black girl who comes of age in an urban city in the North in the post-Civil War years. The protagonist rejects marriage and overcomes numerous losses in her early life, charting her own course and becoming a professional woman who travels south to educate the black masses. Harper's text was written with the goal of promoting change within the homes of black families. This chapter examines what material from her own life Harper included in her story and what kind of preparation for the future she presented for northern black girls in the 1880s. It also considers interiority and the issue of race as themes of Trial and Triumph and concludes by assessing Harper's vision of the potential opportunities for black girls who establish themselves in activist careers before they marry.Less
This chapter offers a reading of Frances E. W. Harper's novel Trial and Triumph, serialized in the newspaper Christian Recorder in 1888–1889. Trial and Triumph, believed to be an autobiography, tells the story of a black girl who comes of age in an urban city in the North in the post-Civil War years. The protagonist rejects marriage and overcomes numerous losses in her early life, charting her own course and becoming a professional woman who travels south to educate the black masses. Harper's text was written with the goal of promoting change within the homes of black families. This chapter examines what material from her own life Harper included in her story and what kind of preparation for the future she presented for northern black girls in the 1880s. It also considers interiority and the issue of race as themes of Trial and Triumph and concludes by assessing Harper's vision of the potential opportunities for black girls who establish themselves in activist careers before they marry.
Nazera Sadiq Wright
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040573
- eISBN:
- 9780252099014
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040573.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This book analyzes writing about black girls in the nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. It asks why black writers of the period conveyed racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination ...
More
This book analyzes writing about black girls in the nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. It asks why black writers of the period conveyed racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination through the lens of black girlhood; why black writers and activists emphasized certain types of girls; what tropes can be identified in the early literature of black girlhood; and where these girlhood tropes originated. The book draws on sources from some of the earliest black newspapers and on fiction, including the newspaper advice columns of Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Frances E. W. Harper's novel Trial and Triumph, and conduct books for black children. It thus unveils the possibilities for disciplinary intersections between African American literature, print culture, and black girlhood studies. The texts it examines reveal what it refers to as a genealogy of black girlhood.Less
This book analyzes writing about black girls in the nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. It asks why black writers of the period conveyed racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination through the lens of black girlhood; why black writers and activists emphasized certain types of girls; what tropes can be identified in the early literature of black girlhood; and where these girlhood tropes originated. The book draws on sources from some of the earliest black newspapers and on fiction, including the newspaper advice columns of Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Frances E. W. Harper's novel Trial and Triumph, and conduct books for black children. It thus unveils the possibilities for disciplinary intersections between African American literature, print culture, and black girlhood studies. The texts it examines reveal what it refers to as a genealogy of black girlhood.
