Songs of Reunion: “Information Wanted” Advertisements, Minnie’s Sacrifice , and the Call-and-Response Tradition

Abstract

Abstract: This article reads Frances Harper’s serialized novel, Minnie’s Sacrifice (1868), as a response to the anxieties of loss and reunion captured in the “Information Wanted” feature of the Christian Recorder . When mutually assessed, each text augments the other, harkening back to the African American cultural tradition of call-and-response. I explore this tradition’s inversion in the periodical, giving way to new forms of understanding how the presence of call-and-response exists beyond the bounds of religiosity, and how it can be a method of literary analysis that helps us better understand African American print culture.