SNCC's Stories

Sharon Monteith does a wonderful job with SNCC’s Stories, researching and analyzing the narrative culture of the young people who made up the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, adding another dimension to our understanding of their work and thinking. . . . In Monteith’s hands, even writing we know, like Howard Zinn’s The New Abolitionists, reveals new insights. . . . Thanks to SNCC writers and SNCC’s Stories we now know more of what SNCC did and learned and how they survived to carry on the struggle.

* Journal of American Studies *

This is a significant contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century social movements, the history of race, and African American history . . . an important work in charting how we might think about and use literature as evidence for the 'missing puzzle pieces' in our understanding of social movements. . . . Monteith not only fills gaps in our knowledge but brings back to life texts largely forgotten that speak to enduring elements of the American experience. . . . This is a scholar at the height of her power, able to map the literary output of these activists to a clear picture of the practical challenges they faced in a rapidly evolving political climate. She guides us through what SNCC writers have been trying to share with a wider audience. Her work thus becomes a vital literary history for democratic theory and practice.

In her highly original, thought-provoking, and endlessly revealing book, Sharon Monteith skillfully blends history, politics, and literary studies to offer an extraordinarily intimate insight into the lived experiences—and the changing personal and public politics—of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. By taking seriously the enormous range of creative and imaginative writings produced by SNCC activists, SNCC's Stories brilliantly locates the emotional and psychological heartbeat of an organization at the forefront of the civil rights and Black Power insurgencies of the 1960s. It is a major new contribution to studies of both the modern African American freedom struggle and American literature.

Sharon Monteith’s SNCC’s Stories presents an insightful and revealing exploration of an unexpected aspect of the 1960s’ freedom movement: that SNCC’s field secretaries and leaders were also dedicated writers who embodied the organization’s deep literary culture. . . . Addressing the substance of the concerns their works embraced, Monteith brilliantly interleaves the problems that faced SNCC’s organizers with sensitive discussions of the literary works through which they processed those issues. . . . Monteith teaches us that SNCC’s stories embody an emotionally more complete vision of the organization.

SNCC’s Stories is thematically structured, but it also traces the chronology of the movement. . . . Monteith examines movement novels, cartoons, field reports, histories, short stories about grassroots activists, and the antecedents to the Black Arts Movement within SNCC. . . . SNCC’s Stories concludes with a call for students and scholars to revisit the literary activism of the civil rights movement. I admire Monteith for her critical contribution to the resurrection of movement literary works, both famous and obscure. This book successfully marries deep historical research and thoughtful literary criticism in a way that should inspire and inform future works in the field.

* The Sixties *

"Though understandable, considering SNCC’s many militant and courageous activities and programmes, the words and literature of the struggle also deserve careful scrutiny. Such scrutiny is exactly what Sharon Monteith provides in her fascinating and important new book, SNCC’s Stories. . . .Her appreciation for SNCC’s creative outpouring of words throughout a decade of struggle is surely warranted, and her ability to sift through and interpret an enormous number of texts puts all of us in her debt."

* Patterns of Prejudice *

The book is a vast historical imaginary spread across time, from activists' experiences written during the 1960s and 1970s, into the decades that followed. Sources such as these set in bolder relief SNCC's grassroots character and emphasis on local people. . . The most moving and important contributions in the book recover and recount the ever-present fear felt by activists and the long-term trauma that resulted—emotions incapable of full expression, yet somehow sometimes accessible in acts of literary imagination written years afterward.

* Journal of American History *

It is the rare book that offers new insight into the SNCC experience during the 1960s and early 1970s phase of the long Black Freedom Struggle. In SNCC’s Stories: The African-American Freedom Movement in the Civil Rights South, Sharon Monteith has managed to do so with alacrity, thoroughness, and a particularly rigorous evaluation of the literary works of SNCC participants.

* The Journal of African American Histo