Description
DAVIS, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.
Edition: First Edition.
In this landmark work of cultural criticism, Angela Y. Davis explores the lives and music of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, demonstrating how blues music became a powerful expression of Black women's lives, identity, resistance, and social history. Widely regarded as one of Davis's most important scholarly works, the book remains an essential text in African American studies, Black feminism, cultural history, music, and literary criticism.
Condition
Octavo. Original black cloth-backed blue paper-covered boards with silver lettering to the spine. Fine. Binding square and tight. Interior clean and unmarked. Top edge bears the ownership stamp of Everett Hoagland.
Provenance
From the personal working library of Everett Hoagland (1942–2025), award-winning poet, educator, and the first Poet Laureate of New Bedford, Massachusetts. This copy retains Hoagland's ownership stamp on the top edge.
Hoagland's poetry explored many of the same themes of African American history, music, identity, memory, and social justice examined in this volume. His work has been studied alongside that of Angela Davis within discussions of African American literature, Black cultural criticism, and the continuing legacy of the Black Arts Movement, making this a particularly meaningful provenance copy.
From the Everett Hoagland Working Library
This volume comes from the personal working library of Everett Hoagland (1942–2025)—award-winning poet, educator, the first Poet Laureate of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and an important voice in late twentieth-century African American poetry. His library reflects decades of scholarship, teaching, and literary engagement with African American history, literature, jazz and blues, Black feminism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black Arts Movement. Individual provenance details specific to this copy are described above.