New Books In Literary Studies

Koritha Mitchell, Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University, has written a complex, interdisciplinary, and important analysis focusing on black women as the lens to explore the intersection of racism and sexism and the strategies that black women have used to persevere and succeed, over 400 years, in the United States. Mitchell’s expertise in American literature and culture is essential to the exploration in From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture (U Illinois Press, 2020), since she turns to the work of writers, playwrights, artists, and celebrated black women to weave together her thesis about how black women have been seen as house slaves, house keepers, but not homemakers. This thesis, which is central to the discussion in From Slave Cabins to the White House, uses a number of cultural texts to examine this idea of “homemade citizenship” that has been constructed by black and brown women who are often in the complicated situation of experienc