Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

Print Culture in a Diverse America. Ed. by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. xii, 291 pp. Cloth, $49.95, isbn 0-252-02398-6. Paper, $27.95, isbn 0-252-06699-5.)

In a widely repeated scene in early African American autobiography, a newly enslaved African discovers a book and, fascinated by the strange artifact that absorbs the attention of his enslavers, attempts to speak to it as though it were sentient. The book does not respond but remains mute and artifactual. According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., the (non)talking book is an apt metaphor for the relationship of an oppressed people to the medium and messages of an oppressive and exclusionary culture. Print does not speak to, or for, the oppressed minority. In the collection under review, James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand gather eleven essays that describe how marginalized groups in America gradually came to speak to—and through—the printed word. . . .

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