"Meticulously researched and copiously documented, ReWriting White should find a ready audience among students, teachers, and scholars in the burgeoning field of 'whiteness studies.'"-James Miller, George Washington University

"Vogel moves the conversation on race and class in the United States to an exciting new level with his wonderful use of popular culture and his smart juxtaposition of African American with Native American and Chinese American perspectives, against which 'whiteness' is made clearer."-Frances Smith Foster, Emory University

"This book promises to make a major contribution to our understanding of the multiethnic dimensions of American literature."-Kevin Gaines, University of Michigan

What did it mean for people of color in nineteenth-century America to speak or write "white"? More specifically, how many and what kinds of meaning could such "white" writing carry? In ReWriting White, Todd Vogel looks at how America has racialized language and aesthetic achievement. To make his point, he showcases the surprisingly complex interactions between four nineteenth-century writers of color and the "standard white English" they adapted for their own moral, political, and social ends. The African American, Native American, and Chinese American writers Vogel discusses delivered their messages in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated their command of the dominant discourse of their times-using styles and addressing forums considered above their station-and fashioned a subversive meaning in the very act of that demonstration.

The close readings and meticulous archival research in ReWriting White upend our conventional expectations, enrich our understanding of the dynamics of hegemony and cultural struggle, and contribute to the efforts of other cutting-edge contemporary scholars to chip away at the walls of racial segregation that have for too long defined and defaced the landscape of American literary and cultural studies.

Todd Vogel, a visiting professor of English and American studies at Trinity College, Connecticut, is the editor of The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays. He has written for Business Week, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Dallas Morning News.