The Books Oracle

When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Women Their Voice

by Ilise S. Carter

A revelatory history exploring how the Spiritualist movement and mediumship gave American women unprecedented public voices in the 19th century. Carter documents how communicating with the dead became women's pathway to speaking on suffrage, abolition, and social reform. The Fox Sisters' rappings sparked a phenomenon that allowed women to claim authority through otherworldly channels when earthly platforms were denied. A fascinating intersection of feminism, religion, and social change.

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