As a black woman, I found "From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture" by Koritha Mitchell to be a fascinating and thought-provoking book that delves into the ways in which African American cultural expression has shaped American democracy. Mitchell's central argument that cultural expression is a form of "homemade citizenship" is compelling, and her use of literature, film, and music to support her analysis is impressive.

One of the things I appreciated about Mitchell's book was her discussion of the ways in which African American cultural expression has been used as a form of resistance throughout history. She draws connections between historical moments of resistance, such as slave rebellions and the civil rights movement, and contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter. This perspective highlights the ways in which African American culture has been a driving force in the struggle for social justice in the United States.

Additionally, Mitchell's analyses of works by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison are insightful and nuanced. Her discussion of Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God," for example, is particularly impressive in the way that she links the novel's exploration of love, self-discovery, and community to larger issues of African American citizenship. Similarly, her analysis of Morrison's "Beloved" highlights the ways in which the novel's exploration of trauma, memory, and history speaks to larger issues of African American identity and belonging.

However, I did find some aspects of the book to be problematic. While Mitchell does touch on issues of racism, I felt that her analysis could have been more critical in some places. For example, her discussion of "The Birth of a Nation" struck me as somewhat uncritical, given the film's racist content and legacy. I would have liked to see more attention paid to the ways in which the film contributed to the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and attitudes.

Additionally, while Mitchell's focus on cultural expression is valuable, I would have liked to see more attention paid to the ways in which political and economic structures have constrained African American citizenship. While cultural expression has undoubtedly been a powerful form of resistance, it is important to acknowledge the ways in which political and economic systems have perpetuated inequality and discrimination.

Despite these criticisms, I found "From Slave Cabins to the White House" to be a valuable contribution to the study of African American culture and history. Mitchell's writing is engaging and accessible, and her arguments are well-supported by examples from literature, film, and music. The connections she draws between historical moments of resistance and contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter are particularly compelling, and her argument that cultural expression is a form of "homemade citizenship" is a powerful one.

Overall, I would highly recommend #FromSlaveCabinstotheWhiteHouse to anyone interested in African American culture and history. While the book is not without its flaws, it is an engaging and valuable read that sheds light on important aspects of American democracy and citizenship. I would give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars, with the caveat that some of the analysis could benefit from a more critical perspective on issues of racism and political economy.

I would like to thank #NetGalley for sending me an advanced copy #FromSlaveCabinstotheWhiteHouse in exchange for my own honest review. This book was due for release on October 15, 2020

This was an incredibly written non-fiction book that was thoroughly researched and is heavy to digest.
If you can get by the extremely lengthy introduction, you will find the rest of the book unforgettable and such an intelligently written piece. Learning new perspectives - especially Black women in America - was intriguing.

I want to thank NetGalley, the author Koritha Mitchell and the publisher University of Illinois Press for providing me with an eARC of this publication. In return, I have promised to provide an unbiased review.

3.5-4 stars

Thanks to NetGalley for an e-arc of this in exchange for and honest review.

This is a book that looks at the way the black community, particularly black women, have made a place for themselves in a society that actively attacks them and make them feel unwanted in the society. And it looks at the ways society then reacts to the ways black women have made a place for themselves and made their life a success. Dr. Mitchell clearly shows that black women do not just react to societies limitations. Rather, it's always the racist society that reacts to their self made success, where every time black women find some way to thrive, even within a society as limiting as America, they are attacked. She does this analysis largely through the lens of literary works through history. I found that intersection of history and literature a really fascinating study. There were a lot of works that I was not familiar with, and that made it difficult to follow sometimes. Nevertheless, I thought it was an excellent way of making her points. That is especially true when she is referring to works I have read, like OEB and Toni Morrison. My biggest complaint about this book was that it felt a bit too academic or esoteric for me. That is a personal issue more than the book itself, and I think it connects back to the larger discussion around the works I wasn't as familiar with. However, it is still a great book worth reading.

My youtube review: https://youtu.be/-FkGW9RaWXg?t=463

If you are unsure, I recommend at least checking out this interview the author had back in 2020 about the book and the topics she explores.
https://youtu.be/R_qkBy5jmuw

An amazing read - to see the the black culture thrive and shift over 400 years was great to read about. Depressing at movements but I applaud our resiliency.

From Slave Cabins to the White House encompasses different facets of the African American experience from a unique perspective. Highly recommend. Mitchell’s other work, Living with Lynching is also a must read.

Fantastic read! This book was very well researched and the literature referenced is fantastic. I love how the author references other texts and the actual stories of enslaved women to give us a glimpse into their lives from a unique perspective. Highly recommended.

This should have been my kind of book. I really like the subject matter. But, it may have been the time when I tried to read it, I just couldn’t get into it.

I learned a lot from this book, however I found it to be dry. I think the narrative is a very important one, and it makes people rethink the history we think we've known. I hadn't read the literature that the book references to unfortunately, so the parts discussing them seemed long and essay-life; it may be a different experience for others who have read them.

In From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture, Koritha Mitchell Ohio State University English professor interrogates key African American texts to understand their conceptions of success and achievement. The book itself is a literary criticism pivoting on the question of citizenship and notions of success. Because Black men and women had been precluded from the official definitions of citizenship as outlined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, they had to devise other manners of marking their success and participation. Thus, the crux of the book is a response to the kind of “know your place” aggression that Black people have been subjected to since (and before) the nation’s inception.

The book is organized chronologically as Mitchell interrogates works by Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), Frances Watkins Harper (Iola Leroy), Nella Larsen (Quicksand), Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), Lorraine Hansberry (Raisin in the Sun), Octavia Butler (Kindred), Toni Morrison (Beloved) and the performative text of Michelle Obama, as First Lady. Mitchell is successful at providing close readings of the works under consideration, especially in the detailed coverage of Quicksand, Kindred, Raisin in the Sun, and Iola Leroy. In some of these examples, an author, such as Larsen or Hurston, creates characters that rail against the expectations of Black womanhood as mothers and wives. In this regard, Mitchell is extremely effective. In other examples, such as Jacobs’ Incidents, the analysis seems slightly weighed down with close readings. In other words, despite it being a work in African American literary criticism, it may have been more effective with summaries of the works prior to the analytical examples. The book is an invaluable resource for those interested in literary criticism, African American literature, and feminist analysis.

I found From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture to be an interesting read. I believe it is a must read. Five stars.

This is a well-researched look at the history of African Americans, especially African American women, throughout this country’s history. I appreciated the immediate identification of the treatment of Michelle Obama while in office and how the underlying prejudice promoted the treatment of one of the ladies in the highest office in the country. This is a must-have for any American History collection.

We should all be reading books like this that remind us of how history has progressed to get us where we are now. This is a highly structured book but I still enjoyed reading it and took plenty of notes on what I was learning. Highly recommend this one!

i really learned a lot from this book, it was a very provocative read, it was well-researched and well written.

DNF'd this book before finishing the introduction. I think the subject matter is incredibly interesting and would love to read another book on the subject that is formatted differently. It reads like a thesis paper that is repetitive and overzealous/overwhelming with the same stance over and over. I think maybe if it was edited in more of a cohesive, nurturing way that is more reader-faced versus it's format that seems like trying to impress a PhD panel, I could have kept reading. Too many books out there to spend hours on one that I just don't feel connected to in reading (and I read a lot of nonfiction). Big props to the author though for researching and writing on a topic that needs to be addressed more.

I had never thought about home this way before, but thanks to Koritha Mitchell, I do now! From Slave Cabins to the White House was a great telling of how Black people have come to this idea of planting roots and having a home. It was a great historical retelling of the resources that she used as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I believe that everyone can learn something from this book. I did not like the introduction at all. It was painfully slow and long to get through. It also felt that the author was trying to prove her intelligence in this section. After the introduction, the book was amazing.

From Slave Cabins to the White House is a work of non-fiction that has the potential to be a timeless piece of literature. Very well researched and the literature referenced was fantastic. Kortiha Mitchell takes the reader on a journey of the enslaved black woman to the Black First Lady of the United States of America. With references to Ida B. Wells, Toni Morrison, W.E.B. DuBois and so many more black scholars; this text is a wealth of knowledge that doesn't short change you on the author's viewpoint. I can see how some reviewers might have faced a challenge being unfamiliar with some of the references but I sincerely hope that motivates one to explore those works as well. I will agree that the introduction is a bit long and somewhat repetitive but nevertheless I enjoyed this book and can not wait to add a physical copy to my library.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Koritha Mitchell does an incredible job laying out a process of African American women going from one form of marginalization to another. The role that many authors played in depicting the experiences of African American experience all contribute to the way we think of our past, present, and future. With more eyes on the atrocities committed against African Americans now than in recent years, Mitchell's work comes at a great time.

As the book begins with an outline of domestic roles African Americans are expected to fill, the book lays a great groundwork in discussing another form of dehumanizing that we don't often discuss. We know slavery and servitude are awful, terrible elements to America's founding, but the nation never offered Black women reprieve from service-based roles. From politics to policing, African American women are meant to stay in one place in society forever, even long after any of us recognize it as systematic or unnatural.

In an eye-opening work, Mitchell nails the tricky element of introducing intricate concepts within a complicated system of ideas and powers at play. Equal parts history lesson and literature review of some of America's finest authors, From Slave Cabins to the White House is a must-read as we all educate ourselves on how we want to shape our country moving forward.

A very interesting and important book. I've taken lots of notes of other things to read and research after reading this, it's a book that will make you work, but it's fascinating and well worth a read.

It has the potential to be a very important book in the field of English. I think readers will enjoy this more if they know alot about the texts the author writes about.