Africana women's voices from the south: focusing on women's issues of the past for definition, identification, and clarification in the presnet

• Main Author: Sanders, Alvelyn J.
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center 1996
• Subjects: African American Studies; African Languages and Societies
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/2298; http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3943&context=dissertations

This study discussed the significant link between Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South (1892) and the work of twentieth-century, black, Southern women writers through their exploration of specific issues, black feminist theory, and the conditions under which they were written. This thesis was based on the premise that Cooper's text can provide clarification for contemporary black women's issues, show a continuum in the work of Southern writers, and prove that similar conditions exist today for black women as in the nineteenth century. Chapter One defines some of the similar issues found in Cooper's work and contemporary writings. Chapter Two discusses the intellectual discourse that commonly identifies these issues, and how they are addressed, within the canon of black feminist theory. Chapter Three clarifies why these issues, in general, have existed in the writings of black, Southern women writers for over a century. It examines their common denominators, Southern heritage and ideological hegemony; and their position in the African-American literary tradition.