Radicals, Vol. 1: Audacious Writings by American Women, 1830–1930

Scholars Stabel and Turpin bring together a successfully corrective anthology from a diverse group of writers from both in and outside the canon. Well-known writers are featured, including Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but the selections are atypical, such as Dickinson’s erotic “Come slowly—Eden!” and an excerpt from Gilman’s Herland, about an all-female utopia. As Roxane Gay notes in a foreword, literacy during this time was largely a privilege for wealthy white women who “were expected to write demure, well-mannered things. These writings are not that.” The editors notably highlight Black authors (Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Frances E.W. Harper, H. Cordelia Ray, Eloise Bibb Thompson); short stories from Chinese American and Native American writers, such as Sui Sin Far and Zitkala-Sa, respectively; and protoqueer writing by Emma Lazarus, Julia Ward Howe, and others. The chapters are arranged alphabetically by author and open with a short biographical introduction. Though some pieces could use more extensive annotative contextualization, the volume succeeds in its mission to “re-present—or in some cases present for the first time—the many beautiful, lesser-known examples of early radical womanhood in America.” This compendium is a wonderful alternative view of the period. (June)