Word by Word : Emancipation and the Act of Writing / Christopher Hager.
Hager, Christopher, author.
2013
PS153.N5 H17 2013
Available Online

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Title Word by Word : Emancipation and the Act of Writing / Christopher Hager.
Author Hager, Christopher, author.
ISBN 9780674067486
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067486
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]
Copyright ©2012
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource : 11 halftones
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/harvard.9780674067486 doi
Call Number PS153.N5 H17 2013
Summary One of the cruelest abuses of slavery in America was that slaves were forbidden to read and write. Consigned to illiteracy, they left no records of their thoughts and feelings apart from the few exceptional narratives of Frederick Douglass and others who escaped to the North-or so we have long believed. But as Christopher Hager reveals, a few enslaved African Americans managed to become literate in spite of all prohibitions, and during the halting years of emancipation, thousands more seized the chance to learn. The letters and diaries of these novice writers, unpolished and hesitant yet rich with voice, show ordinary black men and women across the South using pen and paper to make sense of their experiences. Through an unprecedented gathering of these forgotten writings-from letters by individuals sold away from their families, to petitions from freedmen in the army to their new leaders, to a New Orleans man's transcription of the Constitution-Word by Word rewrites the history of emancipation. The idiosyncrasies of these untutored authors, Hager argues, reveal the enormous difficulty of straddling the border between slave and free. These unusual texts, composed by people with a unique perspective on the written word, force us to rethink the relationship between literacy and freedom. For African Americans at the end of slavery, learning to write could be liberating and empowering, but putting their hard-won skill to use often proved arduous and daunting-a portent of the tenuousness of the freedom to come.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)
In E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2013
E-BOOK PACKAGE LITERATURE 2013
E-BOOK PAKET LITERATURWISSENSCHAFT 2013
HUP Complete eBook Package 2011-2014
HUP eBook Package 2013
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2014
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2015
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Frontmatter
Contents
Illustrations
Introduction: A Colored Man's Constitution
1. Black Literacy in the White Mind
2. The Private Life of the Literate Slave
3. Writing a Life in Slavery and Freedom
4. The Written We
5. Petition and Protest in the Occupied South
6. Black Ink, White Pages
Conclusion: Up from the South
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

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