Hidden LiteraciesMain MenuHidden Literacies - An IntroductionPhillis Wheatley, Amanuensisa letter from Susanna Wheatley, likely dictated to the famous poet she enslaved — with commentary by Katy L. ChilesWalt Whitman’s Baby Talka Confederate veteran writes fan mail in the voice of his infant son — with commentary by Matt Cohen‘Permit Us to Speak Plainly’the 1849 Munsee Petition to Zachary Taylor — with commentary by Andrew NewmanJuvenile Journalism and Genocidea manuscript magazine by three young boys — with commentary by Karen Sánchez-EpplerVisions, Versions, and DeedsCreek Sovereignty in Coosaponakeesa’s Memorials — with commentary by Caroline WiggintonAccounting for Mary Fowler Occoma household inventory of Mary Occom — with commentary by Kelly WisecupLetters and Charactersletter from Walter Duncan to Dollie Duncan from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary — with commentary by Ellen CushmanWriting the Prisoncongregate literacy in the New York penitentiary — with commentary by Jodi Schorb‘Outlandish Characters’a Kickapoo prayer stick — with commentary by Phillip RoundCesar Lyndon Was Herethe account book of an enslaved man in colonial Rhode Island — with commentary by Tara A. BynumBirch-Bark Publications of Simon PokaganMargaret NoodinHidden Literacies - The PodcastAll podcast episodesHidden Literacies - CreditsIndexIndex of all pages
a region destitute of literacy
12019-07-12T12:41:22+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed9677214111Cohen page 10plain2019-07-12T12:41:22+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141As Christopher Hager has observed, northerners, and especially abolitionists, often spoke of the South as a region destitute of literacy. Works like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred were “fixated on the arrested literacy of slaveholders,” Hager writes, and quotes Theodore Dwight Weld’s judgment that most slaveholders “are ignorant men, thousands of them notoriously so, mere boors unable to write their names or to read the alphabet." Johnson is often at pains in his correspondence with Whitman to demonstrate his wide reading, and to differentiate himself from what he regarded as the undereducated and uncurious folks among whom he lived, with their “lack of culture and the love of the ideal in any sense other than the old and barbarous." Still, this letter’s fanciful premise and use of dialect may well have been formal choices designed to flout that Northern prejudice about Southern smarts. For starters, Johnson’s son’s persona in this letter may not be able to spell, but then, he’s eight months old. And more significantly, with its trope of the child speaker and its consistent use of eye-dialect, the letter partakes of the same kind of authority-effect that dialect writing more broadly did in the hands of nationally famous American authors. The letter dares its famous northern, abolitionist, and literary reader to dismiss the opinions of its speaker based on inexperience, ignorance, or illiteracy.
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12019-07-11T16:28:05+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141Commentary: Essay and PodcastJoelle Thomas13Cohen 1plain1102021-01-15T17:36:15+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141
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12019-07-12T12:26:39+00:00Word by Word2citationplain2019-07-12T12:42:11+00:00
12019-07-12T12:41:06+00:00See later & also2Note and citationsplain2019-07-12T12:43:29+00:00
12019-07-12T12:40:10+00:00JNJ to WW 7 Oct 18741citationplain2019-07-12T12:40:10+00:00