The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
2 total works
The Colored American Magazine, first published in 1900, was a pioneering forum for black literary talent. Pauline Hopkins was not only a prolific contributor, but one of its powerful editorial forces. These stories reveal her commitment to fiction as a vehicle for social change, weaving themes such as white oppression, the heroism of black women, and the need for organized resistance to persecution, into the narrative formulas of popular
fiction.
fiction.
Both an extraordinarily detailed examination of black life in nineteenth-century America and a richly textured and engrossing piece of fiction, Contending Forces remains one of the most important works produced by an African American before World War I.