Jackson, Helen (Fiske) Hunt - 1830–85, American writer whose pseudonym was H. H., b. Amherst, Mass. She was a lifelong friend of Emily Dickinson. In 1863, encouraged by T. W. Higginson, Jackson began writing for periodicals. She is the author of poetry, novels, children's stories, and travel sketches. In 1881 she published A Century of Dishonor, an historical account of the government's injustice to Native Americans. This book led to her appointment (1882) as government investigator of the Mission of California. She subsequently wrote Ramona (1884), her famous romance, which presented even more emphatically the plight of Native Americans. See biography by K. Philips (2003). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved. |
Over 70 selections spanning more than 300 years of injustice encompass specific groups victimized by racial prejudice as well as different kinds of racial prejudice. Opinions of both reviled an well-loved figures are included in the writings of everyone from Thomas Jefferson to David Duke. Organization of material into thematic sections (such as Social Darwinism and eugenics, immigration, and other categories) and by groups who were the focus of racist attacks makes this volume especially user-friendly.
Significantly, notes Browder, these ersatz autobiographies have tended to appear at flashpoints in American history: in the decades before the Civil War, when immigration laws and laws regarding Native Americans were changing in the 1920s, and during the civil rights era, for example. Examining the creation and reception of such works from the 1830s through the 1990s -- against a background ranging from the abolition movement and Wild West shows to more recent controversies surrounding blackface performance and jazz music -- Browder uncovers their surprising influence in shaping American notions of identity.
