Inventing Black Women: African American Women Poets and Self-Representation, 1877-2000

“Ajuan Mance’s original and provocative study fills a gap in the scholarship on African American women poets. The historical sweep of her analysis of these poets’ efforts at self-representation is as impressive as the depth of her analysis of individual poems. Students and scholars of African American poetry or of African American women writers will find Professor Mance’s study a rich, invaluable resource. Inventing Black Women incisively delineates the historical contexts that shaped the i...