Class, Whiteness, and Southern literature / Jolene Hubbs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hubbs, Jolene, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 190.

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 190

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Southern States--History and criticism.

American literature.

Authors, American--Southern States--History.

Authors, American.

Poor white people in literature.

White people in literature.

Literature and society--United States--History.

Literature and society.

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

Southern States--In literature.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 191 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Class, Whiteness, and Southern Literature explores the role that representations of poor white people play in shaping both middle-class American identity and major American literary movements and genres across the long twentieth century. Jolene Hubbs reveals that, more often than not, poor white characters imagined by middle-class writers embody what better-off people are anxious to distance themselves from in a given moment. Poor white southerners are cast as social climbers during the status-conscious Gilded Age, country rubes in the modern era, racist obstacles to progress during the civil rights struggle, and junk food devotees in the health-conscious 1990s. Hubbs illuminates how Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Allison, and Barbara Robinette Moss swam against these tides, pioneering formal innovations with an eye to representing poor white characters in new ways.

Contents:

Introduction: Poor White southerners in the American imaginary

Riffraff and half-strainers: Charles W. Chesnutt and regionalism

Slow, sweating, stinking bumpkins: William Faulkner and modernism

Civil rights and uncivil Whites: Flannery O'Conner and southern women's midcentury writing

Hungry women and horny men: Dorothy Allison, Barbara Robinette Moss and Grit Lit

Coda.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Dec 2022).

ISBN:

1-009-25060-4

1-009-25063-9

1-009-25062-0