Community and Critique

"Sara C. VanderHaagen demonstrates how Black women's memory work in the Nadir served as a form of rhetorical theory and activism. This book represents a significant intervention and is a pleasure to read."—David Gold, University of Michigan, coauthor of Educating the New Southern Woman

"VanderHaagen's astute scholarship makes an important contribution to the understanding of the true rhetorical work that Black women performed and that evoked a proud history of survival and resistance."—Shirley Wilson Logan, professor emeritus, University of Maryland, author of We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women

"Beautifully written and thoughtfully argued, Community and Critique by Sara C. VanderHaagen deftly directs scholars in public memory studies to explore the rich and diverse ways Black women at the turn of the twentieth century crafted strategic commemorative practices through speech, petition, and biography with the goal of challenging dominant white memory and celebrating their Black pasts."—Jessica Enoch, University of Maryland, author of Domestic Occupations Spatial Rhetorics and Women's Work