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Mar 19, 2023
Literacy in a Long Blues Note
Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Summary
Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Coretta M. Pittman (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) traces the evolution of Black women’s literacy practices from 1892 to 1934.
Pittman explores two distinct but related eras of Black women’s writing—the Women’s Era of the 1890s and early 1900s, and the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Casting a wide net, Pittman analyzes fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic writing by Black women along with songs performed and written by classic blues singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Victoria Spivey. This innovative approach allows Pittman to show how women from these two generations approached issues of class, respectability, uplift, and empowerment.
Your Host
Kristen Turner
Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century.
