Kate Chopin on pot smoking. Pauline Hopkins on alchemy and the undead. Sui Sin Far on cross-dressing. Emma Lazarus and Angelina Weld Grimk茅 on lesbian longing. Julia Ward Howe on intersexuality. Perhaps the first of its kind, Radicals is a two-volume collection of writings by American women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with special attention paid to the voices of Black, Indigenous, and Asian American women.
In Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, selections span from early works like Sarah Louise Forten鈥檚 anti-slavery poem 鈥淭he Grave of the Slave鈥 (1831) and Fanny Fern鈥檚 Ruth Hall (1855), a novel about her struggle to break into the male-dominated field of journalism, to Charlotte Perkins Gilman鈥檚 revenge fantasy, 鈥淲hen I Was a Witch鈥 (1910) and Georgia Douglas Johnson鈥檚 poem on the fraught nature of African American motherhood, 鈥淢aternity鈥 (1922). In between, readers will discover many vibrant and challenging lesser-known texts that are rarely collected today. Some, indeed, have been out of print for more than a century.
Unique among anthologies of American literature, Radicals undoes such silences by collecting the underrepresented, the uncategorizable, the unbowed鈥攑owerful writings by American women of genius and audacity who looked toward, and wrote toward, what Charlotte Perkins Gilman called 鈥渁 lifted world.鈥
鈥淪cholars Stabel and Turpin bring together a successfully corrective anthology from a diverse group of writers from both in and outside the canon. The editors notably highlight Black authors; short stories from Chinese American and Native American writers; and protoqueer writing. . . . the volume succeeds in its mission to 鈥渞e-present鈥攐r in some cases present for the first time鈥攖he many beautiful, lesser-known examples of early radical womanhood in America.鈥 This compendium is a wonderful alternative view of the period.鈥濃Publishers Weekly
鈥淭his anthology offers up writing from women at a time when women鈥檚 literacy was largely the privilege of wealthy and upper-middle-class white women, and women were expected to write demure, well-mannered things. These writings are not that. They represent a hundred years of women writing their way into public discourse, giving voice to the complexities of their inner lives, their desires, their sentiments about the constraints of womanhood, the political climate, the strictures of class, and their places in their families, communities, and the world beyond.鈥濃擱oxane Gay, author, Bad Feminist: Essays
鈥淭his two-volume anthology . . . represents a significant contribution to the teaching of both American literary history and women鈥檚 studies. . . . Radicals successfully reaffirms the power of primary texts over mere summaries of women鈥檚 history. . . . its editors remind us that 鈥榮imply publishing one鈥檚 words was an assertion of autonomy and self-hood鈥 between 1830鈥1930鈥攁s indeed it still is. These two books provide readers with sustaining stories and enduring visions that will continue to inspire.鈥濃Legacy
