"Women should be seen and not heard" was a well-known maxim in the nineteenth century. In a society perceiving that language was for the province of male, white speakers, how did women writers find a voice?

In Unruly Tongue Martha J. Cutter answers this question with works by ten African American and Anglo American women who wrote between 1850 and 1930. She shows that female writers in this period perceived how male-centered and racist ideas on language had silenced them. By adopting voices that are maternal, feminine, and ethnic, they broke the link between masculinity and voice and created new forms of language that empowered them and their female characters.