![]() ![]() Even then, it was often Iola Leroy-Harper’s 1892 novel about slavery, Reconstruction, and racial struggle-that garnered attention after it was finally made available in paperback in 1987. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Harper’s work moved more completely into American literary scholarship and its classrooms. ![]() ![]() Du Bois’s comments on her poetry and broader work: “She was not a great singer, but she had some sense of song she was not a great writer, but she wrote much worth reading.” Even supportive critics echoed the backhanded praise of W.E.B. Her work was initially kept from a white-dominated academy because of her race, gender, politics, and aesthetics. Harper (1825-1911) has gained a firm place in studies of American literature and culture, but that recognition came only grudgingly and remains far too limited. ![]() This find, shared in the current issue of Common-place, should push us to reconsider how we talk-and don’t talk-about an amazing poet, novelist, essayist, lecturer, and activist whose career spanned seven decades. If you’re a student of African American literature or of the nineteenth century in the United States, you may have already heard about Johanna Ortner’s rediscovery of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s first book, Forest Leaves, which has long been assumed lost-perhaps even apocryphal. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |