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"A fascinating biography of a fascinating woman." - Booklist, starred review"This definitive look at a remarkable figure delivers the goods." - Publishers Weekly, starred review"A brilliant analysis." - Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize winnerFeatured in Ms. Magazine's "Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us 2022" (books by or about historically excluded groups)Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who was formerly enslaved and a father of questionable identity, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a pioneering activist, writer, suffragist, and educator. Until now, Dunbar-Nelson has largely been viewed only in relation to her abusive ex-husband, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. This is the first book-length look at this major figure in Black women's history, covering her life from the post-reconstruction era through the Harlem Renaissance.
Tara T. Green builds on Black feminist, sexuality, historical and cultural studies to create a literary biography that examines Dunbar-Nelson's life and legacy as a respectable activist - a woman who navigated complex challenges associated with resisting racism and sexism, and who defined her sexual identity and sexual agency within the confines of respectability politics. It's a book about the past, but it's also a book about the present that nods to the future.
List of contents
Introducing a Respectable Activist
1. A Respectable Activist Is Born
2. The New Negro Woman in Alice's Literature
3. Activism, Love, and Pain
4. Love and Writing
5. Finding Alice After Paul
6. Love and Education
7. Ms. Dunbar and Politics
8. New Negro Woman's Activism
9. Family, Film, and the Paper
10. The Respectable Activist's Harlem Renaissance
11. Love, Desire, and Writing
12. 'til Death Does the Activist Part
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Tara T. Green is CLASS Distinguished Professor and Chair of African American Studies at the University of Houston, USA where she teaches literature and Black women's studies courses. She is the author of
Reimagining the Middle Passage: Black Resistance in Literature, Television, and Song (2018),
A Fatherless Child: Autobiographical Perspectives of African American Men (2009), and
See Me Naked: Black Women Defining Pleasure during the Interwar Era (2022), and she is the editor of two books, including
From the Plantation to the Prison: African American Confinement Literature (2008). She is from the New Orleans area.
Summary
“A fascinating biography of a fascinating woman.” - Booklist, starred review
“This definitive look at a remarkable figure delivers the goods.” - Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A brilliant analysis." - Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize winner
Featured in Ms. Magazine’s "Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us 2022" (books by or about historically excluded groups)
Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who was formerly enslaved and a father of questionable identity, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a pioneering activist, writer, suffragist, and educator. Until now, Dunbar-Nelson has largely been viewed only in relation to her abusive ex-husband, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. This is the first book-length look at this major figure in Black women’s history, covering her life from the post-reconstruction era through the Harlem Renaissance.
Tara T. Green builds on Black feminist, sexuality, historical and cultural studies to create a literary biography that examines Dunbar-Nelson's life and legacy as a respectable activist – a woman who navigated complex challenges associated with resisting racism and sexism, and who defined her sexual identity and sexual agency within the confines of respectability politics. It’s a book about the past, but it’s also a book about the present that nods to the future.
Foreword
Born in 1875, Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s life shows how a Black bisexual activist and writer navigated a sometimes hostile and ever-changing country from the post-reconstruction era through the Harlem Renaissance.
Additional text
The archival work Tara T. Green has done here is remarkable. We know more about Alice Dunbar-Nelson that we imagined we could know. But there's more. This book teaches us about the layers of Black women's lives that go unremarked upon even when they are remarkable. This book about Alice Dunbar-Nelson's life of activism is itself an act of liberation.
