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Early in the nineteenth century, New York residents K. White and Elizabeth Fisher wrote and published two of the earliest autobiographies written by American women. Their lives ran along parallel courses: both were daughters of Loyalists who chose to remain in the United States; both found themselves entangled in unhappy marriages, abandoned for extend periods, and forced to take on the role of sole provider; and both became involved in property disputes with their male kin, which eventually landed them in prison, where they wrote their narratives. White's tale is a highly crafted text, almost an embryonic novel, incorporating several subgenres and interweaving poetry and prose. Fisher's sto...
One day in 1698, Robert Pyle of Pennsylvania decided to buy a black slave. The next night he dreamed of a steep ladder to heaven that he felt he could not climb because he carried a black pot. In the dream, a man told him the ladder was the light of Jesus Christ and would bear any whose faith held strong; otherwise, the climber would fall. Pyle woke that morning positive that he should eschew slaves and slavery, having equated the pot with the slave he wished to buy. In fact, so acutely did this dream awaken him to his sins that he became a dynamic advocate of liberation. This dream literally changed his outlook and his life. Teach Me Dreams delves into the dream world of ordinary Americans ...
Shining new light on early American prison literature—from its origins in last words, dying warnings, and gallows literature to its later works of autobiography, exposé, and imaginative literature—Reading Prisoners weaves together insights about the rise of the early American penitentiary, the history of early American literacy instruction, and the transformation of crime writing in the “long” eighteenth century. Looking first at colonial America—an era often said to devalue jailhouse literacy—Jodi Schorb reveals that in fact this era launched the literate prisoner into public prominence. Criminal confessions published between 1700 and 1740, she shows, were crucial “literacy e...
In the Age of Revolution, how did American women conceive their lives and marital obligations? By examining the attitudes and behaviors surrounding the contentious issues of family, contraception, abortion, sexuality, beauty, and identity, Susan E. Klepp demonstrates that many women--rural and urban, free and enslaved--began to radically redefine motherhood. They asserted, or attempted to assert, control over their bodies, their marriages, and their daughters' opportunities. Late-eighteenth-century American women were among the first in the world to disavow the continual childbearing and large families that had long been considered ideal. Liberty, equality, and heartfelt religion led to new ...
In the Words of Women brings together the writings-letters, diaries, journals, pamphlets, poems, plays, depositions, and newspaper articles-of women who lived between 1765 and 1799. The writings are organized chronologically around events, battles, and developments from before the Revolution, through its prosecution and aftermath. They reflect the thoughts, observations and experiences of women during those tumultuous times, women less well known to the reading public, including patriots and loyalists; the highborn and lowly; Native Americans and blacks, both free and enslaved; the involved and observers; the young and old; and those in between. Brief narrative passages provide historical co...
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Mólazha (Child of a Whiteman) weaves three central tales together to tell the story of Richard I. Hardy, commonly known as Rick, against the backdrop of his ancestors. This is a story of survival and resilience. Rick’s European ancestors started coming to North America in the 1600s, settling in Nova Scotia as Acadians. Their progeny came to the Mackenzie River District of the NWT in 1851, creating new families and establishing ties to the fur trade. Rick shares stories of family and growing up Métis in the small town of Fort Norman, NWT, and how being Métis coloured his interactions with the Indian, Métis, and White people there. When he was sent to residential school, he was the third...
An analysis of the foundations of autobiography in America