Reviewing the Unspeakable: An Analysis of Book-reviewing Practices of African American Women's Writings of the 1980s

Abstract

The 1980s was a pivotal decade in the history of African American women's writing, as more women became published and wider appreciation and critical attention was being paid to their works. During this era, authors like Terry McMillan, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker gained significant popular attention and opened doors for subsequent generations of African American female authors. The objective of this study is to assess the quality of book reviews for titles written or compiled by African American women authors published between 1980 and 1993 that appeared in important general book-reviewing sources frequently consulted by librarians for the activity of collection development. The study explores how widely reviewed the titles by African American women writers were by major reviewing journals consulted by library and information professionals and provides an assessment of the quality of the reviews that appeared. It was determined that a little over half (58 percent) of the titles received a review in the reviewing sources under scrutiny and that the reviews themselves were primarily descriptive in nature and frequently lacked evaluative details necessary to assist librarians in making decisions to acquire these titles for inclusion in library collections. This study is significant because library collections are an important part of the canonization process and because libraries are important institutions that both preserve and provide wide access to these works.