Sharon Monteith is Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Cultural History at Nottingham Trent University. She is the author of Advancing Sisterhood? Interracial Friendships in Contemporary Southern Fiction (Georgia), coeditor of South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture and Gender and the Civil Rights Movement, and editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American South.
“This is a significant contribution to our understanding of
twentieth-century social movements, the history of race, and
African American history . . . an important work in charting how we
might think about and use literature as evidence for the 'missing
puzzle pieces' in our understanding of social movements. . . .
Monteith not only fills gaps in our knowledge but brings back to
life texts largely forgotten that speak to enduring elements of the
American experience. . . . This is a scholar at the height of her
power, able to map the literary output of these activists to a
clear picture of the practical challenges they faced in a rapidly
evolving political climate. She guides us through what SNCC writers
have been trying to share with a wider audience. Her work thus
becomes a vital literary history for democratic theory and
practice.” - Wesley Hogan, Director, Center for Documentary
Studies, Duke University
“In her highly original, thought-provoking, and endlessly revealing
book, Sharon Monteith skillfully blends history, politics, and
literary studies to offer an extraordinarily intimate insight into
the lived experiences―and the changing personal and public
politics―of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. By
taking seriously the enormous range of creative and imaginative
writings produced by SNCC activists, SNCC's Stories brilliantly
locates the emotional and psychological heartbeat of an
organization at the forefront of the civil rights and Black Power
insurgencies of the 1960s. It is a major new contribution to
studies of both the modern African American freedom struggle and
American literature.” - Brian Ward, professor in American studies,
Northumbria University
“SNCC’s Stories presents an insightful and revealing exploration of
an unexpected aspect of the 1960s freedom movement: that SNCC’s
field secretaries and leaders―the civil rights organizers who sank
roots into the rural and small-town South of the 1960s to lead an
unheralded African American struggle for equality―were also
dedicated writers who embodied the organization’s deep literary
culture. . . . Monteith teaches us that SNCC’s stories may embody a
truer and emotionally more complete vision of the organization―and
the struggle and perhaps America itself―than ‘objective’
histories.” - Mitchell Zimmerman, author of Mississippi Reckoning,
and former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC)
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