Rhetoric Review Apr 2021

(An)other Southern Rhetoric: Charlotte Hawkins Brown’s Mammy: An Appeal to the Heart of the South

Christina L. Moss

Abstract

In 1919 Charlotte Hawkins Brown, founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, wrote the novella, Mammy: An Appeal to the Heart of the South as a persuasive appeal to white Southern women in Greensboro, North Carolina. This essay takes an intersectional approach to argue Brown rhetorically appropriates the mammy trope within a combination of slave narrative and Southern romantic novella addressing white female Southerner’s responsibility to their Black counterparts. The result is a novella providing evidence of Brown’s conscious use of African American Southern identity disrupting white Southern moral superiority.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2021-04-03
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2021.1883808
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism race and writing gender and writing
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