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Book Cover
E-book
Author Knight, Alisha R.

Title Pauline Hopkins and the American dream : an African American writer's (re)visionary gospel of success / Alisha R. Knight
Edition 1st ed
Published Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, ©2012

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Description 1 online resource
Contents "To aid in everyway possible in uplifting the colored people of America": Hopkins's definition of African American success -- Furnace blasts for the tuskegee wizard and the talented tenth: Hopkins and her contemporary self-made men -- "Mammon leads them on": Hopkins's critique of the gospel of success -- "In the lives of these women are seen signs of progress": Hopkins's race woman and the gospel of success -- Conclusion: "Let the good work go on."
Summary "Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins was perhaps the most prolific black female writer of her time. Between 1900 and 1904, writing mainly for Colored American Magazine, she published four novels, at least seven short stories, and numerous articles that often addressed the injustices and challenges facing African Americans in post-Civil War America. In Pauline Hopkins and the American Dream, Alisha Knight provides the first full-length critical analysis of Hopkins's work. Scholars have frequently situated Hopkins within the domestic, sentimental tradition of nineteenth-century women's writing, with some critics observing that aspects of her writing, particularly its emphasis on the self-made man, seem out of place within the domestic tradition. Knight argues that Hopkins used this often-dismissed theme to critique American society's ingrained racism and sexism. In her "Famous Men" and "Famous Women" series for Colored American Magazine, she constructed her own version of the success narrative by offering models of African American self-made men and women. Meanwhile, in her fiction, she depicted heroes who fail to achieve success or must leave the United States to do so. Hopkins risked and eventually lost her position at Colored American Magazine by challenging black male leaders, liberal white philanthropists, and white racists - and by conceiving a revolutionary treatment of the American Dream that placed her far ahead of her time. Hopkins is finally getting her due, and this clear-eyed analysis of her work will be a revelation to literary scholars, historians of African American history, and students of women's studies."--Project Muse
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Hopkins, Pauline E. (Pauline Elizabeth) -- Criticism and interpretation
SUBJECT Hopkins, Pauline E. (Pauline Elizabeth) -- Criticism and interpretation
Hopkins, Pauline E. (Pauline Elizabeth) fast
Subject American fiction -- African American authors -- History and criticism
American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism
African American women authors -- Intellectual life
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- General.
American fiction -- African American authors
American fiction -- Women authors
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2011041682
ISBN 9781572338890
157233889X
9781280125089
128012508X
9786613528940
6613528943