The literature of extreme poverty in the Great Depression / Robert Dale Parker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parker, Robert Dale, 1953- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

Poverty in literature.

Depressions in literature.

Unemployment in literature.

Depressions--1929--United States.

Depressions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (260 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

'The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression' uncovers a forgotten side of modernism: the literature of unemployment and poverty in the 1930s, particularly fiction and poetry about people starving on the street or struggling on welfare, people who often don't know where they'll find their next meal or whether they'll find someplace to sleep. They spend the night on park benches or in filthy flophouses, or they trade sex for food and shelter, or they starve. Time itself changes. For the starving poor standing for hours and hours in a breadline, the speed of modern culture slows down.

Contents:

Cover

The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

1: Introduction: The Poetics of the Stiff

Frozen Time

The Argument and Structure of This Book

Poetry, Fiction, Documentary

Beyond the Poetics of the Stiff

Charity, Indigeneity, Race

2: A Poetics of the Great Depression: Style and Aesthetics in Tom Kromer's Waiting for Nothing

The Narratology of Waiting for Nothing (in Waiting for Nothing)

A Style for Stasis

Kromer's Style and Hemingway's Style

The Poetics of the Stiff

3: How to Make a Queer: The Erotics of Begging

or, Down and Out in the Great Depression

Making a Queer: Male-to-Male Exchange and the Confusion of Categories

Queer Attractions and Straight Fears: A Constellation of Examples

Precarious Masculinity and Wanting It Both Ways

4: A Collage of Breadlines and Restaurants: Waiting for Nothing and the Reinvention of Time

Breadlines: Reginald Marsh

Writing Breadlines

Picturing Breadlines

Why Should We Worry about Breadlines? Recognitions and Misrecognitions through the Restaurant Window

5: Hungry a Long Time: Poverty and the Great Depression in the Early Poetry of Langston Hughes

Hughes's Poetry before the Depression

Hughes's Poetry during the Depression

6: Life on Relief in the Short Fiction of Dorothy West and Martha Gellhorn

Dorothy West's Stories

"Jack in the Pot"

"Mammy"

Martha Gellhorn's Novellas

7: Conclusion: Depression Poverty and American Literary Studies

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on November 5, 2024).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780197785096

0197785093

9780197785072

0197785077

OCLC:

1428778157