Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson
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- USD 25.99
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- USD 25.99
Descripción editorial
"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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writer and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935) "navigated complex questions of racism, women's rights, and sexual agency and found ways to resist" according to this show-stopping biography from Green (Reimagining the Middle Passage), a professor of African American and African diaspora studies at the University of North Carolina. Green studies Dunbar-Nelson's archives to examine "the role respectability played in her projection and definition of an upstanding public persona and its intersection with a private self that may not have met the standards of respectable behavior." A poet involved in the Harlem Renaissance, Dunbar-Nelson was born in New Orleans to a formerly enslaved woman and a man she never knew, and married three times, including to poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who raped and abused her before their marriage and continued abusing her until she left him after four years. Dunbar-Nelson kept much of her personal life out of the public eye, Green writes, including the end of the marriage and her sexual attraction to women. Analysis of Dunbar-Nelson's stories and poems are woven into the main episodes of her life, which helps shape Green's exquisite examination of Dunbar-Nelson's public persona. This definitive look at a remarkable figure delivers the goods.
