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Sydne Mahone, ed. Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African-American Women. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994. 448 pp. $15.95. Reviewed by A Yemisi Jimoh University of Arkansas-Fayetteville
In the United States, the early nineteenth century was a period of intense abolitionist and women's suffragist activism. Those few black women whose voices were heard during this politically charged era encountered the challenges of oppressive race and gender policies that were and in many ways still are ingrained in the cultural psyche and social practices of the United States. Many black women recognized the racist ideology that informed the thinking of many of their white suffragist women allies, and at the same time black women also recognized the sexist ideology of many of the black men with whom they worked for freedom of the black body within the civil structure of the United States. Among the black women whose voices have triumphed over time and challenged audiences to hear them are Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, and Frances E. W. Harper. Cooper, in fact, reminded white suffragists that racial freedom was not a subordinate issue; yet other women made the hard decision to support abolition and subordinate women's suffrage, because at that time black women certainly would remain disfranchised if abolition failed and women's suffrage succeeded.
When black women of the nineteenth century combined artistic impulses and political concerns, as did Sojourner Truth and Frances E. W. Harper, the result was political drama. Harper, born free and educated in the home of her uncle, and Truth, born into bondage and denied education, shared an affinity for the drama and power of oral expression. Sojourner Truth's straightforward eloquence and drama-filled improvised presentations of her own liberating...