Publisher's Weekly Review
Andrews, a University of Wisconsin English professor, has collected the spiritual autobiographies of Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw and Julia Foote, who preached the gospel from 1836 to 1879 and were pioneers as women, preachers and blacks at a time when slavery was ending in the U.S. These memoirs chronicle difficult childhoods, religious conversions in revival camp meetings and adult lives dedicated to saving souls across black and white America. While some readers may find the evangelical language slow going, these texts remain important documents of racial and feminist radicalism in American religious life. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
This volume contains the autobiographies of three black women of nineteenth-century America Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote all of whom saw Christ's purpose in the events of their daily lives and all of whom wrote and preached with the purpose of enlightening others and arousing in their audience the desire for ``sanctification.'' Their religious commitment was severe and fundamentalist: they express a horror for dancing, the theater, and other worldly pleasures. Freeborn women who lived in the North, all three had mystical visions and preached to large congregations, traveling from pulpit to pulpit despite the protestations of husbands, the dangers of touring the slave states, and general disapproval by society. Moreover, the passionate strangeness of their views laid them open to charges of craziness or fakery. These three intense, simple, and visionary life stories published here along with an informative scholarly introduction reveal not only the strength of the authors' religious feelings, but also their determination to achieve some sense of self-actualization at a time when such desires were all-too-commonly thwarted. Notes; no indexes. PM. 208'.8042 (B) Lee, Jarena / Elaw, Zilpha / Foote, Julia A. J. / Afro-American evangelists Biography / Afro-American women Biography / Afro-Americans Religion [CIP] 85-42544
Choice Review
This book is a collection of the personal narratives of three black women preachers of the 19th century: Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote. As works in the tradition of spiritual autobiography, they recount the progress of the soul from damnation to salvation and thus bear a similarity to the autobiographical reflections of a St. Augustine, or a John Bunyan. But here the similarity ends, for, as narratives of black women of the 19th century, they reveal an inward struggle conditioned at every point by the twin evils of racism and sexism. Lee, Elaw, and Foote not only knew the kind of racism that Richard Allen faced, which led to the founding of African Methodism in this country, but also the virulent sexism of 19th-century America of which Allen himself was guilty. As wives and mothers, their roles were prescribed and circumscribed by what Barbara Welter has termed ``the cult of true womanhood.'' Their arena was the home, not the pulpit. Though the volume focuses on the 19th century, it also lends insight into contemporary problems faced by women in the church. Andrews's detailed introduction places the works in literary and historical context, and his notes on each of the autobiographies explain unfamiliar terms and provide useful bibliographic references for those wishing to do further research. This book is highly recommended as a source for undergraduate and graduate students and for faculty interested in black Religion, women's studies, or American studies.-J.O. Hodges, University of Tennessee at Knoxville
