Do Not Separate Her from Her Garden

Carlyn Ena Ferrari is Assistant Professor of English at Seattle University.

While Do Not Separate Her from Her Garden is not a biography, Ferrari's meticulous archival research, explicit reverence for Spencer, and decision to integrate personal narrative into the book's preface and coda cultivate a sense of intimacy that mirrors the affinity biographers often develop with their subjects. Ferrari's move to share space with Spencer in this way ultimately heightens the stakes of her project: in addition to serving as an inquiry into the possibilities that emerge when we refuse to separate Black women from their material and proverbial gardens, Ferrari's book illustrates the possibilities that surface when we cease to separate Black women from each other in the gardens they come to share.-- "ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment" A major contribution to studies of Anne Spencer specifically and to American literary and cultural criticism more broadly. Ferrari has engaged carefully with all the extant critical work in the field and pushed the level of scholarship to new heights. This book will prove of immense value to readers with an interest in the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights movements and to poetry readers, social historians, and cultural critics alike. --Aldon Lynn Nielsen, The Pennsylvania State University, author of The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka