| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Ch. 1 | The Daughters' Arrival: Histories, Theories, Vernaculars | 10 |
| Ch. 2 | Diaspora Subjectivity and Transatlantic Crossings: Phillis Wheatley's Poetics of Recovery | 28 |
| Ch. 3 | "The Too Advent'rous Strain": Slavery, Conversion, and Poetic Empowerment in Phillis Wheatley's Elegies | 58 |
| Ch. 4 | "Social Piety" in Ann Plato's Essays | 71 |
| Ch. 5 | "I Took a Text": Itinerancy, Community, and Intertextuality in Jarena Lee's Spiritual Narratives | 87 |
| Ch. 6 | Rituals of Desire: Spirit, Culture, and Sexuality in the Writings of Rebecca Cox Jackson | 108 |
| Ch. 7 | Performing Community: Culture, Community, and African American Subjectivity before Emancipation | 127 |
| Afterword: The Sacred Subject | 140 |
| Notes | 143 |
| Selected Bibliography | 165 |
| Index | 177 |
