Significant African American Women Writers

Why This Matters

When you encounter African American women writers on your exam, you're being tested on far more than names and publication dates. These writers represent the intersection of race, gender, and literary form—demonstrating how marginalized voices used autobiography, poetry, fiction, and journalism to challenge dominant narratives about Black humanity, womanhood, and citizenship. Their works are primary evidence for understanding how enslaved and free Black women navigated the double bind of racial and gender oppression while creating new literary traditions.

Don't just memorize who wrote what. Know why each writer chose her particular genre, how her work challenged contemporary assumptions, and what strategies she employed to reach her audience. The exam will ask you to connect these writers to broader movements—abolitionism, Reconstruction, the women's suffrage movement—and to analyze how their formal choices (slave narrative conventions, sentimental fiction, investigative journalism) served their political and artistic goals.

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Pioneers of the Slave Narrative Tradition

The slave narrative became the dominant literary form for African American writers before the Civil War, but women's narratives faced unique challenges. Female narrators had to address sexual exploitation while maintaining the "respectability" their white audiences demanded—a tension that shaped both content and form.

Harriet Jacobs

• First African American woman to author her own slave narrative—Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) broke ground by centering female experiences of bondage
• Sexual exploitation becomes the central horror rather than physical violence, directly addressing how slavery corrupted the "cult of true womanhood" for Black women
• Pseudonymous publication (as "Linda Brent") reflects the era's constraints on women discussing sexuality, even when documenting abuse

Sojourner Truth

• Oral tradition meets print culture—The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) was dictated to Olive Gilbert, raising questions about authorship and voice that remain central to the genre
• "Ain't I a Woman?" speech (1851) demonstrates how Truth wielded rhetoric to expose the contradictions between idealized white womanhood and Black women's lived reality
• Intersectionality avant la lettre—her activism linked abolition and women's suffrage, insisting these causes were inseparable

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Breaking Literary Firsts

Several writers achieved "firsts" that challenged the assumption that Black women were incapable of literary production. Each publication was itself an argument against racist pseudoscience and the denial of Black intellect.

Phillis Wheatley

• First published African American female poet in the United States—Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) required a preface signed by eighteen Boston men attesting to her authorship
• Neoclassical form demonstrates mastery of European literary conventions, strategically proving intellectual equality through imitation
• Subtle antislavery arguments embedded in poems addressing freedom and Christianity, navigating the constraints of writing while enslaved

Harriet E. Wilson

• First novel published by an African American woman—Our Nig (1859) predates the more famous post-war novels by decades
• Northern racism exposed through the story of a free Black woman's indentured servitude, complicating the narrative that freedom meant equality
• Sentimental and autobiographical hybrid blurs genre boundaries, using fiction to tell truths too dangerous for memoir

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

• First African American woman to publish a short story ("The Two Offers," 1859) and among the first to publish a novel (Iola Leroy, 1892)
• Activist-artist model combined poetry, fiction, and oratory in service of abolition, temperance, and suffrage
• Uplift ideology pervades her fiction, emphasizing education and moral reform as paths to racial progress

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Insider Testimony and Documentary Writing

Some writers leveraged their unique positions—as witnesses to history, as survivors of specific institutions—to create documentary literature that served as evidence in political debates.

Elizabeth Keckley

• Behind the Scenes (1868) offers unprecedented access to the Lincoln White House from the perspective of Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker and confidante
• Self-made success narrative traces her journey from slavery to entrepreneurship, modeling Black economic self-sufficiency during Reconstruction
• Controversy upon publication stemmed from revelations about the Lincolns, raising questions about privacy, loyalty, and who gets to tell whose story

Charlotte Forten Grimké

• Sea Islands journals document her work as a teacher to newly freed people during the Civil War, providing firsthand accounts of the Port Royal Experiment
• Elite free Black perspective distinguishes her from formerly enslaved narrators, showing the diversity of African American experience
• Poetry and prose both served her activist aims, contributing to the literary culture of educated Black communities in the North

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Theorists of Race, Gender, and Social Change

By the 1890s, African American women writers were producing sophisticated theoretical work that analyzed the systems oppressing them. These writers moved beyond testimony to theory, demanding structural change.

Anna Julia Cooper

• A Voice from the South (1892) is considered a founding text of Black feminist thought, arguing that Black women's perspectives were essential to understanding American society
• "When and where I enter" formulation insists that the progress of Black women measures the progress of the race and the nation
• Educational philosophy emphasized liberal arts education for Black women, challenging vocational-only models

Ida B. Wells

• Investigative journalism transformed anti-lynching activism—Southern Horrors (1892) used data and case studies to demolish the myth that lynching punished rape
• Economic analysis revealed lynching as a tool for suppressing Black economic competition, not protecting white women
• International advocacy took her campaign to Britain, using global pressure to shame American violence

Pauline Hopkins

• Contending Forces (1900) uses serialized fiction to explore racial violence, mixed-race identity, and Black community resilience
• Editor of Colored American Magazine gave her a platform to shape African American literary culture at the turn of the century
• Historical fiction connected contemporary struggles to slavery's legacy, insisting readers understand the past to change the present

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Quick Reference Table

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Self-Check Questions

1. Which two writers achieved literary "firsts" in different genres, and how did their formal choices reflect different strategies for asserting Black humanity?

2. Compare and contrast how Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth used narrative to address enslaved women's experiences. What does each writer's relationship to print culture reveal about authorship and voice?

3. If an FRQ asked you to discuss how African American women writers documented the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, which two writers would you choose and why?

4. Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells both published major works in 1892. How do their different genres (philosophical essay vs. investigative journalism) reflect different approaches to social change?

5. Which writers specifically addressed the intersection of race and gender oppression, and how did their arguments anticipate later concepts like intersectionality?