Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women

The other of us is a white woman, whose research and writing tend to concern black feminist theory and African American women writers, particularly in the era surrounding the U.S. Civil War. [...]both of us have read Jacqueline Jones Royster's Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change amon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:College composition and communication 2001, Vol.52 (3), p.471-475
Main Authors: Villanueva, Victor, Fowler, Shelli B.
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Education
African Americans
Community Relations
Critical Theory
Discourse Analysis
Females
Feminism
Literacy
Positive Reinforcement
Reviews
Rhetorical Criticism
Social Action
Social change
Social Justice
Walker, Alice (1944- )
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Summary:The other of us is a white woman, whose research and writing tend to concern black feminist theory and African American women writers, particularly in the era surrounding the U.S. Civil War. [...]both of us have read Jacqueline Jones Royster's Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women with similar concerns and similar praise, though with differences in degree (at least when it comes to the concerns-praise being a kind of superlative, with our having heard of high praise but never having heard of low praise, and "faint praise" not being praise at all). [...]Royster writes that she is "not asserting an essentialism about African American women writers as essayists" (21). Royster uses "trends and practices in rhetorical criticism, discourse analysis, ethnographic analysis" (283) and a smidgen of autobiography to argue for the recognition of a long history of African American women rhetoricians for social justice and social action. [...]the question isn't "why `elite,'" but "how elite,'" Royster focuses on the women of the nineteenth century who had access to higher education and thereby "gave rise to the development of a cadre of welleducated women" (6), a legacy that continues, with Royster noting that the first book written by an African American woman about African American women for a white audience didn't see print until 1956 (written in 1955).
ISSN:0010-096X
1939-9006
DOI:10.2307/358630