Lion Woman's Legacy


Book Description

Arlene Avakian's memoir evokes the quarrels, ambition, prejudice, and courage that shaped her coming of age in a family that immigrated to the United States to escape genocide in Turkey. Inspired by her passionate feminism and strengthened within a loving lesbian relationship, Avakian records and re-examines her personal history, discovering the story of her grandmother, which brings with it a legacy of radical politics and a powerful affirmation of ethnic identity.




American Legacy


Book Description

A dual portrait of JFK, Jr. and Caroline Kennedy draws on personal interviews to discuss such topics as the assassination attempt on Jackie Kennedy while she was giving birth, Caroline's reclusive lifestyle, and the unsettling results of John's and his wife's autopsies.




The Legacy Book in America, 1664 - 1792


Book Description

Legacy books in colonial America were instruments for the transmission of cultural values between generations: the dying mother (usually) instructing and advising children on the path to salvation and heavenly reunions. They were a popular and influential form of women's discourse that distilled the ideologies of the religious establishment into practical and emotional lessons for lay persons, especially the young. This collection draws together legacy texts written by colonial American women and girls: five mother's legacy books and two legacies by children, organized here chronologically. These legacies were written in anticipation of dying, making awareness of death central to the texts. All are highly personal, revealing the thought processes and emotive patterns of their authors, and all are meant for the comfort and instruction of the loved ones these dying women and girls were leaving behind. Published between 1664 and 1792, these texts provide insight into early New England culture through to the first years of the republic. Included are: Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear Children (1664) Susanna Bell, The Legacy of a Dying Mother to Her Mourning Children (1673) Sarah Goodhue, The Copy of a Valedictory and Monitory Writing (1681) Grace Smith, The Dying Mother's Legacy (1712) Sarah Demick, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sarah Demick (1792) Hannah Hill, A Legacy for Children (1714) Jane Sumner, Warning to Little Children (1792) Benjamin Colman, A Devout Contemplation on ... the Early Death of Pious & Lovely Children (1714) A Late Letter from a Solicitous Mother To Her Only Son (1746) Memoirs of Eliza Thornton (1821)




Winston-Salem's African American Legacy


Book Description

Winston-Salem was created in 1913 when the City of Winston and the Town of Salem merged. Salem was established in 1766 by the Moravian Church as a devout religious community. The county seat of Winston was formed out of Salem in 1849. African Americans had no voice in the consolidation; however, these descendants of slaves built a legacy in a "separate and unequal" municipality in the 20th century. The thriving tobacco industry delivered swift progress for African Americans in the Twin City, placing them on the level of the "Black Wall Street" cities in the South. Slater Industrial Academy (now Winston-Salem State University) provided the educational foundation. WAAA radio gave the community an active voice in 1950. Winston-Salem's African American Legacy showcases the significant contributions through the lens of the city's historical cultural institutions.




Pages from the Past


Book Description

American popular magazines play a role in our culture similar to that of public historians, Carolyn Kitch contends. Drawing on evidence from the pages of more than sixty magazines, including Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Black Enterprise, Ladies' Home Journal, and Reader's Digest, Kitch examines the role of journalism in creating collective memory and identity for Americans. Editorial perspectives, visual and narrative content, and the tangibility and keepsake qualities of magazines make them key repositories of American memory, Kitch argues. She discusses anniversary celebrations that assess the passage of time; the role of race in counter-memory; the lasting meaning of celebrities who are mourned in the media; cyclical representations of generational identity, from the Greatest Generation to Generation X; and anticipated memory in commemoration after crisis events such as those of September 11, 2001. Bringing a critically neglected form of journalism to the forefront, Kitch demonstrates that magazines play a special role in creating narratives of the past that reflect and inform who we are now.




Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race and the Politics of Memory


Book Description

In Women and the Historical Enterprise in America, Julie Des Jardins explores American women's participation in the practice of history from the late nineteenth century through the end of World War II, a period in which history became professionalized as an increasingly masculine field of scientific inquiry. Des Jardins shows how women nevertheless transformed the profession during these years in their roles as writers, preservationists, educators, archivists, government workers, and social activists. Des Jardins explores the work of a wide variety of women historians, both professional and amateur, popular and scholarly, conservative and radical, white and nonwhite. Although their ability to earn professional credentials and gain research access to official documents was limited by their gender (and often by their race), these historians addressed important new questions and represented social groups traditionally omitted from the historical record, such as workers, African Americans, Native Americans, and religious minorities. Assessing the historical contributions of Mary Beard, Zora Neale Hurston, Angie Debo, Mari Sandoz, Lucy Salmon, Mary McLeod Bethune, Dorothy Porter, Nellie Neilson, and many others, Des Jardins argues that women working within the broadest confines of the historical enterprise collectively brought the new perspectives of social and cultural history to the study of a multifaceted American past. In the process, they not only developed the field of women's history but also influenced the creation of our national memory in the twentieth century.




The Italian American Heritage


Book Description

First published in 1999. The many available scholarly works on Italian-Americans are perhaps of little practical help to the undergraduate or high school student who needs background information when reading contemporary fiction with Italian characters, watching films that require a familiarity with Italian Americans, or looking at works of art that can be fully appreciated only if one understands Italian culture. This basic reference work for non-specialists and students offers quick insights and essential, easy-to-grasp information on Italian-American contributions to American art, music, literature, motion pictures and cultural life. This rich legacy is examined in a collection of original essays that include portrayals of Italian characters in the films of Francis Coppola, Italian American poetry, the art of Frank Stella, the music of Frank Zappa, a survey of Italian folk customs and an analysis of the evolution of Italian-American biography. Comprising 22 lengthy essays written specifically for this volume, the book identifies what is uniquely Italian in American life and examines how Italian customs, traditions, social mores and cultural antecedents have wrought their influence on the American character. Filled with insights, observations and ethnic facts and fictions, this volume should prove to be a valuable source of information for scholars, researchers and students interested in pinpointing and examining the cultural, intellectual and social influence of Italian immigrants and their successors.




American Women Modernists


Book Description

The seven essays included in this volume move beyond the famed Ashcan School to recover the lesser known work of Robert Henri's women students. The contributors, who include well-known scholars of art history, American studies, and cultural studies demonstrate how these women participated in the "modernizing" of women's roles during this era.




Half in Shadow


Book Description

Nellie Y. McKay (1930–2006) was a pivotal figure in contemporary American letters. The author of several books, McKay is best known for coediting the canon-making with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which helped secure a place for the scholarly study of Black writing that had been ignored by white academia. However, there is more to McKay's life and legacy than her literary scholarship. After her passing, new details about McKay's life emerged, surprising everyone who knew her. Why did McKay choose to hide so many details of her past? Shanna Greene Benjamin examines McKay's path through the professoriate to learn about the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy. Benjamin shows that McKay's secrecy was a necessary tactic that a Black, working-class woman had to employ to succeed in the white-dominated space of the American English department. Using extensive archives and personal correspondence, Benjamin brings together McKay’s private life and public work to expand how we think about Black literary history and the place of Black women in American culture.




Black Legacy


Book Description

Drawing on folktales, oral histories, religious rituals and music, this book explores the pervasive influence of African traditions on American life. Pierson aims to reinterpret American history in a way that disrupts conventional assumptions and turns racial stereotypes inside out.