Wright's research is breathtaking. Her subject matter is of the utmost importance. This book lays the foundation for all future scholarship on African American girls in representation and in life.--Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights

An important gift from an emerging scholar with a keen critical eye and impressive sleuthing skills. With depth and insight, Wright explores African American women's most exigent issues from the cusp and vantage of girlhood: marriage, motherhood, widowhood, and employment, each state intensified by the myriad oppressions black women uniquely face. In addition, Wright's book enriches nascent black print culture studies through its compelling engagement with archival documents and its valuable illumination of previously neglected newspapers, magazines, conduct books, sentimental discourses of all types. Drawing on a striking variety of print media, Wright revels in today's incalculable possibilities for research into African American women's history, literature and culture, and illustrates significant ways understudied black literary gems--from nineteenth century newspapers and scrapbooks--can deepen readers' insights into the supremacy of education to black people across US history and African American women's fierce pursuits of justice and self-determination.--Joycelyn Moody, Sue E. Denman Distinguished Chair in American Literature, University of Texas at San Antonio