Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

"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 "Reads for the rest of us" list of 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.

Author: Tara T. Green
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 01/13/2022
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.80w x 1.00d
ISBN13: 9781501382307
ISBN10: 1501382306
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American | African American & Black
- Literary Criticism | Women Authors
- Biography & Autobiography | Social Activists

About the Author
Tara T. Green is Linda Carlisle Excellence Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. She is the author of Reimagining the Middle Passage: Black Resistance in Literature, Television, and Song (2018) and A Fatherless Child: Autobiographical Perspectives of African American Men (winner of the 2011 Outstanding Scholarship in Africana Studies Award from the National Council for Black Studies), and the editor of two books, including From the Plantation to the Prison: African American Confinement Literature (2008). She is Past President of the Langston Hughes Society.