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Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama: Audacious Writings by American Women, 1830-1930
Kate Chopin on pot smoking. Pauline Hopkins on alchemy and the undead. Sui Sin Far on cross-dressing. Emma Lazarus and Angelina Weld Grimké 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’s anti-slavery poem “The Grave of the Slave” (1831) and Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1855), a novel about her struggle to break into the male-dominated field of journalism, to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s revenge fantasy, “When I Was a Witch” (1910) and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poem on the fraught nature of African American motherhood, “Maternity” (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—powerful writings by American women of genius and audacity who looked toward, and wrote toward, what Charlotte Perkins Gilman called “a lifted world.”
In Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama , selections span from early works like Sarah Louise Forten’s anti-slavery poem “The Grave of the Slave” (1831) and Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1855), a novel about her struggle to break into the male-dominated field of journalism, to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s revenge fantasy, “When I Was a Witch” (1910) and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poem on the fraught nature of African American motherhood, “Maternity” (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—powerful writings by American women of genius and audacity who looked toward, and wrote toward, what Charlotte Perkins Gilman called “a lifted world.”
264 pages, Paperback
Published June 15, 2021
1 person is currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Roxane Gay
130 books169k followersRoxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. Her newsletter, The Audacity, where she also hosts The Audacious Book Club, can be found at audacity.substack.com.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 5, 2022
Really great! Out of all of these writers, I had previously only heard of 4, which is a little wild and all of the writers had something fascinating and unique to say. I also appreciated the editors both letting the writers live in their context and acknowledging the limits and blindspots that the writers had. I am so glad these volumes exist.
October 6, 2022
I read this while working at a sleep away summer camp in nowhere New Hampshire, some of it was soooo boring and some of it was great. No regrets. Skip the poetry is all, in my humble opinion. Loved the murder mystery and fiction. Makes me wanna read Herland fr fr
June 14, 2021
*4.5
From Fanny Fern (born in 1811) to Georgia Douglas Johnson (who died in 1966). the female writers in this collection range—in their life spans—from the Romantic to the Postmodern periods in literature. Therefore, it's no surprise why "Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama", includes works from lesser-known and very well-known female writers who touch on taboo subjects, such as ghosts, lesbian love, women's writing being published, cross dressing and revenge—each excerpt reflects a specific moment in time. The writers use different types of traditional literary forms to write about topics outside of acceptable societal and gender norms. However, using traditional literary forms is not a criticism, just an observation.
On the whole, I loved this anthology! It's a fantastic collection of women's writing! I suspect that Meredith Stabel and Zachary Turpin were faced with making difficult decisions about whose work and which work to include in this anthology. I feel that what has resulted is a collection of writing that, as is pointed in the foreword, is radical primarily because "literacy has always been a privilege rather than an inalienable right for marginalized people" (Loc 45). For women of any colour, writing was a means to say what was inappropriate for them to say aloud. As a woman of colour, reading this made me feel included in a history of literature that tends to exclude us. For example, there were moments I was waiting to read Phyllis Wheatley and then had to remind myself that, although Wheatley's poetry and writing is phenomenal, she was not writing about radical topics of her time. Yet, she's the only black poetess I learned about when I was studying American literature in university (in Canada). I wish I'd had a collection like "Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama" to refer to when I was studying.
I highly recommend this text! I especially hope that your local public library has it once it's released!
My personal favourites in this anthology were, "The Storm" by Kate Chopin, "A Chinese Boy-Girl" by Sui Sin Far, "If I Had Known" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "A Double Standard" by Frances E.W. Harper, "Talma Gordon" by Pauline Hopkins, "The Hermaphrodite" by Julia Ward Howe, "An Appeal to Woman" by Sarah Forten Purvis, "Clotelle—A Tale of Florida" by Katherine Davis Chapman and "The Soft-Hearted Sioux" by Zitkala-Sa.
I'd like to end this review with a fantastic quote from Fanny Fern's "Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1885):
"'when I get to be a woman shall I write books, mamma?'
'God forbid,' murmured Ruth kissing the child's changeful cheek; 'God forbid,' murmured she, musingly as she turned over the leaves of her book; 'no happy woman ever writes' (Loc 854).
Many thanks to NetGalley and the University of Iowa Press for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of "Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama" in exchange for my honest review. I can't wait to get my hands on volume 2!
https://www.netgalley.co.uk/book/2109...
From Fanny Fern (born in 1811) to Georgia Douglas Johnson (who died in 1966). the female writers in this collection range—in their life spans—from the Romantic to the Postmodern periods in literature. Therefore, it's no surprise why "Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama", includes works from lesser-known and very well-known female writers who touch on taboo subjects, such as ghosts, lesbian love, women's writing being published, cross dressing and revenge—each excerpt reflects a specific moment in time. The writers use different types of traditional literary forms to write about topics outside of acceptable societal and gender norms. However, using traditional literary forms is not a criticism, just an observation.
On the whole, I loved this anthology! It's a fantastic collection of women's writing! I suspect that Meredith Stabel and Zachary Turpin were faced with making difficult decisions about whose work and which work to include in this anthology. I feel that what has resulted is a collection of writing that, as is pointed in the foreword, is radical primarily because "literacy has always been a privilege rather than an inalienable right for marginalized people" (Loc 45). For women of any colour, writing was a means to say what was inappropriate for them to say aloud. As a woman of colour, reading this made me feel included in a history of literature that tends to exclude us. For example, there were moments I was waiting to read Phyllis Wheatley and then had to remind myself that, although Wheatley's poetry and writing is phenomenal, she was not writing about radical topics of her time. Yet, she's the only black poetess I learned about when I was studying American literature in university (in Canada). I wish I'd had a collection like "Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama" to refer to when I was studying.
I highly recommend this text! I especially hope that your local public library has it once it's released!
My personal favourites in this anthology were, "The Storm" by Kate Chopin, "A Chinese Boy-Girl" by Sui Sin Far, "If I Had Known" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "A Double Standard" by Frances E.W. Harper, "Talma Gordon" by Pauline Hopkins, "The Hermaphrodite" by Julia Ward Howe, "An Appeal to Woman" by Sarah Forten Purvis, "Clotelle—A Tale of Florida" by Katherine Davis Chapman and "The Soft-Hearted Sioux" by Zitkala-Sa.
I'd like to end this review with a fantastic quote from Fanny Fern's "Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1885):
"'when I get to be a woman shall I write books, mamma?'
'God forbid,' murmured Ruth kissing the child's changeful cheek; 'God forbid,' murmured she, musingly as she turned over the leaves of her book; 'no happy woman ever writes' (Loc 854).
Many thanks to NetGalley and the University of Iowa Press for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of "Radicals, Volume 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama" in exchange for my honest review. I can't wait to get my hands on volume 2!
https://www.netgalley.co.uk/book/2109...
February 26, 2021
The tagline for this book is ‘Audacious Writings by American Women, 1830-1930’. Firstly, can I say how much I love the word audacious? I think audacity is something we should all strive for in life. Anyway, this book. It’s a collection of short stories, poems and excerpts from longer prose works by women who were stepping outside of the lot assigned to them and speaking with voices that were loud and engaging. Women unafraid to show a view of the world as it was, not how everyone would have liked it to be. With lesser-known works by well-known authors such as Charlotte Perkins-Gillman or Harriet Beecher Stowe and on through a diverse range of authors: Sui Sin Far, Emma Lazarus, Angelina Weld Grimké and Julia Ward Howe to name a few, this is a book which brings life to the issues that mattered to these authors. Intersexuality, loss, death, recreational drugs… it’s all here.
What I like about the way these works are presented is that each author is given an identity. We see photographs of them, learn a little of their history and this contextualises their works, bringing their voices to life on the pages of this anthology. And the works curated here are artfully chosen and presented thoughtfully. Longer works are interspersed with poetry, and most of the authors have one or two works presented, giving a broader perspective on their writing. This was like reading a history book written by the people who lived it – a snapshot of the feelings of these authors and their views on what was going on around them, living and breathing in these pages.
Really fantastic. I’d highly recommend bookmarking this one for when it comes out in July – I know I’ll be buying myself a physical copy to dip into in the future.
Here’s to being more audacious… always!
What I like about the way these works are presented is that each author is given an identity. We see photographs of them, learn a little of their history and this contextualises their works, bringing their voices to life on the pages of this anthology. And the works curated here are artfully chosen and presented thoughtfully. Longer works are interspersed with poetry, and most of the authors have one or two works presented, giving a broader perspective on their writing. This was like reading a history book written by the people who lived it – a snapshot of the feelings of these authors and their views on what was going on around them, living and breathing in these pages.
Really fantastic. I’d highly recommend bookmarking this one for when it comes out in July – I know I’ll be buying myself a physical copy to dip into in the future.
Here’s to being more audacious… always!
January 24, 2021
Radicals is an excellent book, a great and beautiful book that collects the work of many women writers.
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I did not know the vast majority, I had no idea of their existence, their work or the achievements of their life, however it moves me. The point of view of these valuable artists who were ahead in time with their ideas and wishes.
.
I discovered and fell in love with some of the works in this anthology and I am going to keep an eye on volume two. It is a great selection and a great compilation job, so very well curated that should be present in every home library. And therefore deserves to be read slowly so you can apreciate every short story or poem inside.
.
Thanks to #NetGalley and University of Iowa Press ti let me read #RadicalsVol1 in exchange for my honest opinion before goes on sale this june
.
I did not know the vast majority, I had no idea of their existence, their work or the achievements of their life, however it moves me. The point of view of these valuable artists who were ahead in time with their ideas and wishes.
.
I discovered and fell in love with some of the works in this anthology and I am going to keep an eye on volume two. It is a great selection and a great compilation job, so very well curated that should be present in every home library. And therefore deserves to be read slowly so you can apreciate every short story or poem inside.
.
Thanks to #NetGalley and University of Iowa Press ti let me read #RadicalsVol1 in exchange for my honest opinion before goes on sale this june
February 7, 2021
I received an ARC from NetGalley and The University of Iowa Press in exchange for an honest review.
“writing is a radical act because literacy has always been a privilege rather than an inalienable right for marginalised people.” -Roxanne Gay
This was a fantastic anthology showcasing so many women I’ve never even heard of before. Some whose writing had been lost to time until this anthology.
Unfortunately some of the topics written about so long ago are still present today, including voting rights, the right to autonomy over ones own body etc.
This was such a moving and still so relevant anthology and I’m so grateful that it exists.
I can’t wait for volume two, you can bet I’ll snap it up !
5 stars!
“writing is a radical act because literacy has always been a privilege rather than an inalienable right for marginalised people.” -Roxanne Gay
This was a fantastic anthology showcasing so many women I’ve never even heard of before. Some whose writing had been lost to time until this anthology.
Unfortunately some of the topics written about so long ago are still present today, including voting rights, the right to autonomy over ones own body etc.
This was such a moving and still so relevant anthology and I’m so grateful that it exists.
I can’t wait for volume two, you can bet I’ll snap it up !
5 stars!
March 23, 2021
This was a fantastic collection of very different writers. You could tell that Stabel and Turpin were careful in what they selected. I've added a lot to my reading list because of this book.
Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read and review this!
Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read and review this!
May 31, 2021
A beautiful collection of poetry by late women writers. If you enjoy poetry (especially classical poetry) and want to read about the unrepresented then I'd check this volume out!
Disclaimer: I read this in advanced on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Disclaimer: I read this in advanced on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
February 26, 2021
Not a whole lot to say about this one. It's an anthology of feminist women authors who were, well, radicals in their time. Definitely worth picking up when it comes out!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews