“This book is like being at a party where you hardly know anyone,” writes Lavinia Kumar at the opening of her new book, “Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists.”
As the Plainsboro author of several books of poetry and nonfiction works on ancient medicines and women scientists continues, “You are introduced, find out a little — but you want to learn more. The book gives introductions in easy-to-read short prose biographies of women who were essential participants in early American history. They were active writers, painters, sculptors, poets, preachers, journalists, and publishers. Preaching was recorded by others, but, for some women, preaching was sometimes the only way to ‘write’ Most of the biographies include words written or spoken by each woman.”
Since, as she notes, more extensive biographies of the nearly 90 women covered in her book are “available on the web, in libraries, in specialized collections, and at universities,” Kumar’s approach is to provide sketches of women whose work or activities occurred up to the Civil War.
And while the focus is on women, there is one exception. “Because he was so key to the publishing, politics, writing, and activity within a large part of the time period of this book, one man, George Garrison, is included — he was a great supporter of equality and abolition, and the owner of the important The Liberator Newspaper.”
Kumar writes that her “biographies are organized by birth date. An alphabetical index at the end is accompanied by the title of the biographical piece. In addition, there is a separate chronological index of Black and Native-American Women. A chronology of important event includes laws, wars, organizations, and other events noted in the short biographies. A small table at the end includes further historical information.”
The biographies are also divided into five sections. “The first gives an initial foundation: a few poems designed to give flavor of the many unnamed people at and near the beginning of America. The remaining four sections are the short prose pieces. They are 1. Colonials; 2, Which Revolution is in the Air?; 3. A Complex of Revolutionaries Arise; and, lastly, 5. More Revolution? Different Revolutions? Escapes? “
To provide the tone of the book, here is one of Kumar’s poems found in her opening “Foundation” section, “The Call of the Drums”:
The following is a sample of how the writer introduces and elaborates on her subjects:
“And In Time Imagination Flowed” — Phillis Wheatley (Peters) c. 1753-1784
She was likely just seven, her front teeth lost, a human in a ship from Gambia. Then sold as a Boston maid to the Wheatleys, an orphan slave they named for the ship Phillis.
Yet they kept her chores light — and taught her to read English, Greek, and Latin, and , at the same time, encouraged her interest in poetry.
The family and an English countess who had seen Phillis Wheately’s poems supported her travel to London (1773), the Wheatley son accompanying her as chaperone. There, she published her first book of poems (and a first book of poems published by a Black author), “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.” It was signed by John Hancock and other notables.
After her book was published, Wheatley was given her freedom, and in 1778, she married John Peters, a free Black man from Boston with whom she had three children, though none survived. She died giving birth in 1784.
Wheatly is most often known for her poem “On Being Brought From Africa to America,” which includes the lines:“Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan Land/to be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train”
But, she had later poems — for instance in the “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,” she wrote her truth, that she was “snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat”:
The personal and poetry-infused book is appropriately “dedicated to the memory of Chris Bursk,” the late Bucks County-based “prolific and imaginative poet, and hugely energetic mentor, teacher, editor, and perpetual student. He was, most of all, caring and a humanitarian.”
Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists, Lavinia Kumar, 134 pages, $15, independently published, available online at Amazon.
