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Edited by John Cullen Gruesser. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. 240 pp. $39.95/$16.95 paper.
The author of four novels, several short stories, and innumerable articles for the Colored American Magazine, not to mention a musical and a self-published Primer of Facts Pertaining to the Early Greatness of the African Race, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins was the most prolific, versatile, and daring black woman writer at the turn of the century. Virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Hopkins has attracted considerable interest in the last decade. The Schomburg Library's recent republication of many of her works has made them available to scholars and students alike.
John Gruesser's aptly-titled collection makes clear that, in spite of groundbreaking scholarship by Hazel Carby, Claudia Tate, Richard Yarborough, and others, the project of "rediscovering" Hopkins has just begun. The book is framed by Nellie Y. McKay's helpful introduction and Elizabeth Ammons's provocative afterword; combined with Malin LaVon Walther's bibliography and the seven essays, all published here for the first time, it will prove an invaluable resource for Hopkins scholars. Placing Hopkins's apparently self-contradictory representations of race and gender within the context of contemporary discourses -- from "racial pornography" to the New Psychology -- these essays demonstrate that Hopkins was a major literary and intellectual...