Review by Choice Review
This is the best book on the famous civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and one of the better books on the civil rights movement in general. A scholar of rhetoric, Brooks focuses closely on the content and context of Hamer's public addresses, often employing the terminology of that discipline, which will particularly appeal to scholars in that field. Beyond that, however, Brooks and her collaborator, Davis Houck, who together coedited the 2011 compilation The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer, the single best primary source anthology available for studying the grassroots sharecropper activist turned warrior, provide a wealth of detailed local history and a close analysis of Hamer's life. This includes the most extensive and perceptive coverage available of her early years prior to joining the movement as well as the struggles, tragedies, and difficulties of Hamer's later years. In short, the work combines the best of archival research (and appropriate reference to the secondary historical literature on the freedom movement in Mississippi) and rhetorical analysis, ultimately successfully recovering "Hamer's symbolic legacy by recovering her agency and intellect" and demonstrating how her iconic status "worked toward and against her activist purposes." For all scholarly libraries. Summing Up: Essential. Most levels/libraries. --Paul Harvey, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
