Living Jim Crow : the segregated town in mid-century Southern fiction / Gavan Lennon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lennon, Gavan, author.

Series:

Modern American literature and the new twentieth century

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

African Americans in literature.

Civil rights in literature.

Racism in literature.

Cities and towns in literature.

Southern States--In literature.

Southern States.

Literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

vii, 251 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2020]

Summary:

"Explores how novelists of the mid-century US South invented small towns to aesthetically undermine racial segregation" -- Back cover

"Analysing the ubiquity of the small town in fiction of the mid-century US South, Living Jim Crow is the first extended scholarly study to explore how authors mobilised this setting as a tool for racial resistance. With innovative close readings of Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Lillian Smith, Byron Herbert Reece, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and William Melvin Kelley, the book traces the relationship between activism and aesthetics during the long civil rights movement. Lennon reframes a narrative of southern literature during the period as one as one characterised by an aesthetics of protest, identifying a new mode of reading racial resistance and the US South." -- Back cover.

Analysing the ubiquity of the small town in fiction of the mid-century US South, Living Jim Crow is the first extended scholarly study to explore how authors mobilised this setting as a tool for racial resistance. With innovative close readings of Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Lillian Smith, Byron Herbert Reece, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and William Melvin Kelley, the book traces the relationship between activism and aesthetics during the long civil rights movement. Lennon reframes a narrative of southern literature during the period as one as one characterised by an aesthetics of protest, identifying a new mode of reading racial resistance and the US South.

Contents:

Acknowlegements

Introduction: Uncovering a poetics of protest

Creators of the small town: anthropology, racial etiquette and African American fiction in the 1930s

The White town/Coloured town paradigm: Lillian Smith's Maxwell

An anatomy of critique: Byron Herbert Reece's Tilden

The Milan cycle: Carson McCuller's Milan

Breaking the pencil: William Faulkner's Jefferson

Knowing how to curse: William Melvin Kelley's Sutton

Conclusion: (De)Generative ground: the field and the segregated town.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781474461573

1474461573

OCLC:

1117519053