Invented Lives Narratives of Black Women 1860-1960 [Paperback]

Concentrating on carefully chosen selections from ten writers, Mary Helen Washington explores the work, the realities, and the hopes of black women writers between 1860 and 1960.
 
Featuring works by Harriet Jacobs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline E. Hopkins, Fannie Barrier Williams, Marita O. Bonner, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Dorothy West, and Gwendolyn Brooks.
 
Praise forInvented Lives
 
“Mary Helen Washington has done more than any other single critic to expand the Afro-American and Anglo-American feminist canons.”—The Women’s Review of Books
 
“This collection is, in fact, two fine books in one: at once an anthology and a critical study.”—New York Times Book Review
 
“The forceful, uncompromising, and distinctive voice of Mary Helen Washington brings together foremothers and daughters . . . in a volume that presents . . . a century of black women’s writing along with a vital new tradition of black feminist criticism.”—Marianne Hirsch,Ms. MagazineAcknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
“The Darkened Eye Restored : Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION
Meditations on History: The Slave Woman’s Voice

HARRIET JACOBS
“The Perils of a Slave Woman’s Life” fromIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl(1860)
Bibliographic Notes

PART TWO

INTRODUCTION
Uplifting the Women and the Race: The Forerunners—Harper and Hopkins

FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER
“Iola” fromIola Leroy(1892)
Bibliographic Notes

PAULINE E. HOPKINS
“Sappho” fromContending Forces(1900)
“Bro’r Abr’m Jimson’s Wedding: A Christmas Story” (1901)
Bibliographic Notes

FANNIE BARRIER WILLIl“*