Southern Novels
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Southern novels query
I am looking for contemporary novels (written, say, since the late 1970s/early 1980s) that take place in the South any time during the period between the _Brown_ ruling of 1954 and King's assassination in 1968.
I am researching the civil rights movement and have found extensive historical and sociological studies, as well as numerous autobiographies of Movement participants. However, Alice Walker's _Meridian_ is the only fiction I know of that deals with the Movement.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Paul Tewkesbury, LSU
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Southern Novels - 3 responses
Brian Ward writes:
There's a good essay on civil rights novels (broadly conceived) by Richard King in the new collection, 'The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement', eds B. Ward & T. Badger (NYU Press, 1996) which may be of help/use. As well as Meridian, King writes in detail about Ernest Gaines' Gathering of Old Men and Rossellen Brown's Civil Wars. Melissa Walker's study 'Down from the Mountain Top: Black Women's Novels in the wake of the CRM, 1966-1989" (Yale - I think - 1991) is another good place to start looking for novels on the southern freedom struggle. Hope this is of use,
Brian Ward
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Joan Browning writes:
Read John Gregory Brown's DECORATIONS IN A RUINED CEMETERY (1994), the 1995 Southern Regional Council's Lillian Smith fiction book award winner. Not about the "Movement" but a splendidly written novel exploring "the enduring themes of great Southern fiction -- family, race, and faith" in contempory New Orleans.
Mary Lee Settle's 1995 Lillian Smith fiction Book Award Winner, CHOICES, follows a Richmond woman's twentieth century campaign to make the world better -- in Kentucky coalfields, in the Spanish Civil War, and in the Sixties Civil Rights Movement. It not only deals with the Movement but also puts the Movement into the context of modern searches for freedom and meaning. Plus it's beautifully written and a good rad. read.
Joan C. Browning
Ronceverte WV
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Buddy Sledge writes:
One possibility for comporary fiction regarding this period is Anne R. Siddon's "Downtown" which deals with Atlanta in the mid 1960s. As I recall the Civil Rights movement figures prominently in this novel.
Buddy Sledge
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Southern Novels
I recommend Larry Brown (Oxford, MS firefighter)'s "Dirty Work" about two dis-abled Vietnam vets, black and white who share a room together in a Mississippi VA hospital.
Ricky Dobbs, Texas A&M University
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Southern Novels - 3 responses
The novels of Ernest Gaines should be helpful although none deal with the Movement per se.
Bruce Turner, USL
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Dwayne Cox writes:
Anne Rivers Siddons, HEARTBREAK HOTEL, does not deal exclusively with this topic, but has much to do with it.
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Dale Foster writes:
One novel that comes to mind is by Heath, William, 1942- "The Children Bob Moses Led," (Minneapolis, MN : Milkweed Editions, 1995). This is a novel set in the piney woods of Miss. during the Civil Rights Movement. The reason I know about this book is that I just spent three days will the author at a conference in Birmingham.
I'm sure there are others. For more information on novels set in Alabama or by Alabama authors, you might try contacting Dr. Bert Hitchcock (hitchwb@mallard.duc.auburn.edu) and Jeanie Thompson (thompj1@mail.auburn.edu), both of Auburn University.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996
From: Jack E. Davis
Subject: Southern Novels
Clyde Edgerton's 1988 _The Floatplane Notebooks_, published by Chapel Hill, is a fascinating commentary of southern life through the voices of multiple narrators, including a wisteria vine. The passages of an emasculated Vietnam veteran's tormented deliberations (strike two defeats for white southerners) are particularly powerful.
Jack E. Davis
Eckerd College
davisje@eckerd.edu
Humanities & Social
Sciences Online
