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
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12019-07-12T12:47:11+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed9677214111Cohen page 13plain2019-07-12T12:47:11+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141On one hand we don’t often get the chance to explore the literacy world of people like John Newton Johnson. We know it’s racist. But that racism is woven into a larger tapestry of experience and assumptions, of both hard lessons and strange forms of privilege, that do not tend to get explored in their particularities. One of the reasons we are stuck in the urban-rural dyad we are now in the U.S. is that the stories of people like Johnson haven’t been so much silenced as deprecated—assumed instead of explored, contained instead of confronted. On the other hand, from the standpoint of Johnson’s attraction to Whitman, when we indict Whitman for his racism, we usually look mostly at Whitman’s words. That will only get us so far, because Whitman contradicts himself and because it leaves us stuck in an old way of understanding the effect of a set of texts by way of their author: relate the texts to each other, find the patterns of racism or universalism or nurturing democratic wholeness, and, it is assumed, you’ve found the man, his effect, and why he has that effect. But, we might ask, how did Johnson read Whitman—what was Whitman’s writing doing, irrespective of his intents? If we do that in the case of a letter like this, we find a careful reader of Whitman’s writing. Johnson was a selective reader in some ways, but one who is known to have memorized Whitman’s works, and who is confronting what he regards as Whitman’s one-sided version of national unity and offering an alternative model, grown out of his own mind but also sprouted from Whitman’s writing, from other writers (from Thomas Macaulay to John Burroughs), and the experience of the Alabama backcountry’s socio-political milieu.
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12021-02-16T20:07:58+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141IndexJoelle Thomas9Index of all pagesvispath2021-02-16T21:22:00+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141
12019-07-11T16:28:05+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141Commentary: Essay and PodcastJoelle Thomas13Cohen 1plain1102021-01-15T17:36:15+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141