Joanna Kolendo is an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Services at Chicago State University, where she works as a Reference & Electronic Resources Librarian. She received her M.S. from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and an M.Phil. from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Based on the life of Jane Johnson (c. 1814-22 to 1872) and her escape from slavery, the historical novel The Price of a Child (1995) by Philadelphia writer Lorene Cary (b. 1956) tells the tale of a freedwoman’s journey from bondage to freedom and describes the lives of freed African Americans in 1850s Philadelphia. The title of the novel reflects that the main character, 30-year-old Virginia ...
The Philadelphia Story (1939) is a comedy of manners presented as a three-act play set in the late 1930s in a magnificent mansion in Philadelphia’s western Main Line suburbs, a location of wealth and exclusivity. Written by Philip Barry (1896-1949), a prolific dramatic and comic playwright, The Philadelphia Story centers on the lives of an ...
Written by Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) and published in 1908, The Red City: A Historical Novel of the Second Administration of President Washington is a historical romance, a genre whose plot typically consists of a quest, followed by trials, and ending in marriage. Mitchell presents a view of Philadelphia in the 1790s as politically divided between the Federalists and the Republicans and ...
Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy