Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary' Societies.

Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary' Societies. By Elizabeth McHenry. New Americanists. (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 423. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-8223-2995-6; cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-2980-8.)

Elizabeth McHenry's study of African American literary societies illuminates the political function of these societies within the black community. Her aim is to show how literary societies "worked to promote activism, to foster resistance, and to create citizens in black communities throughout the United States" from roughly the 1830s through the 1930s (p. 19). In this respect the title is misleading, for the study is not a chronological narrative history of these societies. However, McHenry has achieved her stated goal and much more in this multilayered and creatively written work.

Well informed by primary and secondary sources, this insightful analysis reveals that the slave narrative was not the only literature produced by blacks during the antebellum period. Free blacks individually and through societies produced literature that was both "political and imaginative" (p. 120). This writing, published in pamphlets, newspapers, and religious journals, has been undervalued by scholars for its literary worth and is the primary focus of this study.

Using Benedict Anderson's model of the "imagined community," McHenry begins by demonstrating how the written word was perceived and used for political gain by antebellum free blacks. Utilizing David Walker's Appeal (1829) as the quintessential literary tract for black resistance, McHenry argues not only that black activists used the written word to raise consciousness and to gain access to a public sphere denied them, but more importantly, that they associated literacy with citizenship. This political correlation fueled their desire to master the written word and use it as a weapon to fight against their second-class status. Thus, the black press promoted literacy, teaching its audience both how to read and what to read to become an informed citizen of the United States. While on one level these acts to promote literacy forced more whites to confront the issues of slavery and discrimination, on another level they can be viewed as acts of resistance against notions of white superiority.

After the Civil War the focus of literary societies shifted from self-improvement and abolition to black pride, self-help, and justice. Two societies--the Bethel Literary in Washington, D.C., and the Boston Literary and Historical Association--promoted historical research about African Americans by African Americans to garner knowledge that would counter negative representations of blacks popularized by white supremacists. Both associations promoted racial pride, solidarity, and advancement at a time when blacks were politically, socially, and economically ostracized from mainstream American progress. The literary activism of black women through the women's club movement and numerous literary societies of the 1920s and 1930s are deftly treated in the last two chapters. McHenry then concludes her study with a look at the recent phenomenon of black book clubs and the "discovery" of a black readership by mainstream publishers in the 1980s.

The strength of this work lies in its meticulous presentation of details extracted from various letters, newspapers, and club papers that illuminate not only what African Americans read but how they used multiple texts--including the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and classic literary works--to inform their own literature. Most impressive is McHenry's treatment of the spoken word, or the shared "reading" of texts that gave the illiterate access to the written word. This important observation broadens our definition of literacy beyond private reading and writing and shows that many African Americans, although not actively literate, benefited from the written word aurally. This study expands the work started by Dorothy Porter on black literary societies. However, its emphasis on political activism illustrates that these societies functioned not as purely social or intellectual institutions but as political institutions that advanced the cause of all American blacks. Of equal value is McHenry's challenge that we reconsider accepted definitions of literature and literacy among African Americans.

LISA Y. KING

Morgan State University