American Protest Literature (John Harvard Library) [Paperback]

Zoe Trodd (Editor), Howard Zinn (Afterword), John Stauffer (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674027639 | ISBN-13: 978-0674027633 | Publication Date: April 30, 2008 | Edition: Reprint

“I like a little rebellion now and then”—so wrote Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, enlisting in a tradition that throughout American history has led writers to rage and reason, prophesy and provoke. This is the first anthology to collect and examine an American literature that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future.

American Protest Literature presents sources from eleven protest movements—political, social, and cultural—from the Revolution to abolition to gay rights to antiwar protest. Each section reprints documents from the original phase of the movement as well as evidence of its legacy in later times. Informative headnotes place the selections in historical context and draw connections with other writings within the anthology and beyond. Sources include a wide variety of genres—pamphlets, letters, speeches, sermons, legal documents, poems, short stories, photographs, posters—and a range of voices from prophetic to outraged to sorrowful, from U.S. Presidents to the disenfranchised. Together they provide an enlightening and inspiring survey of this most American form of literature.

(20061001)

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this time of warrantless wiretaps and imprisonment without trial, [this anthology] remind[s] us how hard previous generations of Americans fought to preserve and broaden our civil and human rights...By linking original works to later pieces Trodd underlines the historical roots of American dissent and the ongoing relevance of these writings. (starred review)
--Duncan Stewart (Library Journal )

Trodd organizes this excellent anthology around 11 reform movements, most based on race, class, or gender (e.g., the American Revolution, abolition, women's suffrage, gay rights). Collecting the work of both established writers and new voices, the book comprises some hundred pieces (1-3 pages each): prose excerpts, political documents, poems, photographs, film briefs, essays, fiction, narratives, and orations...This excellent book can serve as a textbook as well as a resource on social change and the literature thereof. Indeed, the persuasiveness of the collection raises the question not only of whether protest literature is a genre of its own, but also of whether it is the most American literary form.
--L. L. Johnson (Choice )

The recently published treasure American Protest Literature, edited by Zoe Trodd...belongs on our bookshelves for two types of enjoyment. For starters, it is an invaluable reference, the first anthology to collect and examine American literature "that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future." It is also a great pleasure to read the 500-plus pages...May the daily newspaper and the nightly news glow with new perspective. Read this book.
--Karen DeCrow (Syracuse New Times )

About the Author

Zoe Trodd is a member of the Tutorial Board in History and Literature, Harvard University.

John Stauffer is Professor of English and American Literature and Language and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; Reprint edition (April 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674027639
• ISBN-13: 978-0674027633
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, November 8, 2006

By 

Gretchen Vecsey (Phoenix, Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Protest Literature (John Harvard Library) (Hardcover)

This book is compelling proof that dissent is patriotic. Zoe Trodd traces the literature that has worked for change and as far as I know this is the first book to define this genre (American Protest Literature). Trodd's discussion of what makes a text "protest literature" sets the standard and along the way she shows how the most unlikely sources can be considered literature. She also tells a good story. Among my favorites were the moment when Chief Tecumseh sat next to Governor Harrison on a bench in 1810 and slowly pushed him to the edge (then said that this was what settlers were doing to Indians), or when John Brown read a speech while he was in prison and wrote "good" in the margins (it argued that he was better off dead), or when a large crowd in Beijing in the 1950s greeted Du Bois with the John Brown Song, or when black audiences booed the movie The Defiant Ones at a screening, or when suffragists charged the stage at the centennial in Philadelphia in 1876. From Tom Paine and Frederick Douglass all the way to 2006 this book shows how writers have tried to achieve the American ideal of equality and freedom. Chapters cover the American revolution, race-based literature (abolition, lynching, civil rights, Native American rights), antiwar literature, women's protest literature, worker's protest literature, gay rights and AIDS protest. Particularly important is the focus on writers who tried to build alliances across protest movements and Trodd's interviews with writers and artists are fascinating as well (I remember that she spoke to Barbara Ehrenreich, Robert Pinsky, Amiri Baraka, and Tim O'Brien, perhaps others). Trodd writes with verve and clarity, and history comes alive especially when she connects earlier literature to its legacy. This is an invaluable book and it's hard to see how she could have covered more ground without doing several volumes. A testimony to those who believed that people might use words to change the world. Highly recommended.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing and Provocative, November 7, 2006

By 

Edward Boyd (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Protest Literature (John Harvard Library) (Hardcover)

This is an electrifying journey into the heart of America's protest tradition. Organized chronologically by protest movement - 11 movements from 1776 to today - Zoe Trodd's brilliant and thoughtful book examines the rich tradition of American protest literature. This is the tradition, Trodd explains, that has provided "a revolutionary language and a renewed vision of the possible," the literature that gives "distinctive shape to long-accumulating grievances, claims old rights, and demands new ones... creates space for argument, introduces doubt, deepens perception, and shatters the accepted limits of belief." The book is a joy to read: Trodd, a Harvard professor, writes engagingly and accessibly, and the end result is a comprehensive, useful, and elegantly constructed book, with each chapter featuring the literature of a particular movement AND the pieces of that literature's legacy (often this legacy is a document of concrete political change - an amendment or bill). Bonus features are numerous images, an afterword by Howard Zinn (author of A People's History of America), and a new poem by Robert Pinsky. On display are the voices of dissent and resistance that tried to change history, and which might, even today, inspire America to live up to its ideals. This book is crucial for any understanding of the history of dissent, and I cannot recommend it highly enough: it will shape discussion of protest literature for years to come.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Collection, October 10, 2007

By 

R. Puentes (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Protest Literature (John Harvard Library) (Hardcover)

American Protest Literature is a great collection. It was required for one of my classes, I attend a liberal arts college, and the excerpts from the book, that are from other works, brought on numerous discussions. As a student you are able to analyze the protests of generations before you, and you are also made aware that not a lot has changed. Fantastic Book, it would be a great reference book to a gamut of subjects; American Revolution, Slavery, Womens Rights.