The World Is Our Home: Society and Culture in Contemporary Southern Writing

by Jeffrey J. Folks (Editor), Nancy Summers Folks (Editor)

Overview

Since the early 1970s southern fiction has been increasingly attentive to social issues, including the continuing struggles for racial justice and gender equality, the loss of a sense of social community, and the decline of a coherent regional identity. The essays in The World Is Our Home focus on writers who have explicitly addressed social and cultural issues in their fiction and drama, including Dorothy Allison, Horton Foote, Ernest J. Gaines, Jill McCorkle, Walker Percy, Lee Smith, William Styron, Alice Walker, and many others. The contributors provide valuable insights into the transformation of southern culture over the past thirty years and probe the social and cultural divisions that persist. The collection makes an important case for the centrality of social critique in contemporary southern fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813156071
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	07/15/2014
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeffrey J. Folks is professor of literature at Doshisha University in Japan. Nancy Summer Folks is a freelance editor with more than 15 years experience working with Southern literature.

Table of Contents

	The World Is Our Home: An Introduction	1
	Competing Histories: William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sherley Ann Williams's Dessa Rose	12
	New Narratives of Southern Manhood: Race, Masculinity, and Closure in Ernest Gaines's Fiction	29
	The Snake and the Rosary: Violence and the Culture of Piety in Sheila Bosworth's Slow Poison	53
	"Because God's Eye Never Closes": The Problem of Evil in Jayne Anne Phillips's Shelter	73
	Gender and Justice: Alice Walker and the Sexual Politics of Civil Rights	93
	"Trouble" in Muskhogean County: The Social History of a Southern Community in the Fiction of Raymond Andrews	107
	"The Politics of They": Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina as Critique of Class, Gender, and Sexual Ideologies	117
	Transcendence in the House of the Dead: The Subversion Gaze of A Lesson Before Dying	142
	Walker Percy's Lancelot Lamar: Defending the Hollow Core	163
	Regeneration Through Nonviolence: Frederick Barthelme and the West	176
	Making Peace with the (M)other	186
	Toward Healing the Split: Lee Smith's Fancy Strut and Black Mountain Breakdown	201
	Stories Told by Their Survivors (and Other Sins of Memory): Survivor Guilt in Kaye Gibbons's Ellen Foster	220
	James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux Novels	232
	The Physical Hunger for the Spiritual: Southern Religious Experience in the Plays of Horton Foote	244
	Richard Ford: The Postmodern Exile and the Vanishing South	259
	Contributors	273
	Index	275

Editorial Reviews

Multifaceted and illuminating.... These essays provide the kind of new critical perspectives southern fiction demands and deserves as it continues to depict social and cultural changes. The editors and essayists have paved the way for our understanding of the future of southern fiction.

David Madden

Reminds us, as have previous scholars of Southern literature, that the literature of the American South is much more varied and variegated than we often imagine. We should be thankful for this reminder.

Mississippi Quarterly

This book is an important text for the student of southern literature and history because each author examined is writing from the other side of the turbulent Fifties and Sixties, from having seen rural towns become burgeoning cities, and from having witnessed the politically disenfranchised attempt to join the mainstream.

Journal of the American Studies Association

The essays challenge popular perceptions about the South and lend insight into the cultural and literary future of the region.

Book News

These essays challenge popular perceptions about the South and lend insight into the cultural and literary future of the region.

Educational Book Review

A satisfying collection of essays by scholars who have proved themselves as solid commentators in the field of southern literature.

Fred Hobson

The editors' introduction succinctly summarizes a quarter-century of literary scholarship with a social focus. Strongly recommended.

Choice

"This book is an important text for the student of southern literature and history because each author examined is writing from the other side of the turbulent Fifties and Sixties, from having seen rural towns become burgeoning cities, and from having witnessed the politically disenfranchised attempt to join the mainstream." — Journal of the American Studies Association

"The essays challenge popular perceptions about the South and lend insight into the cultural and literary future of the region." — Book News

"The editors' introduction succinctly summarizes a quarter-century of literary scholarship with a social focus. Strongly recommended." — Choice

"Multifaceted and illuminating.... These essays provide the kind of new critical perspectives southern fiction demands and deserves as it continues to depict social and cultural changes. The editors and essayists have paved the way for our understanding of the future of southern fiction." — David Madden

"These essays challenge popular perceptions about the South and lend insight into the cultural and literary future of the region." — Educational Book Review

"A satisfying collection of essays by scholars who have proved themselves as solid commentators in the field of southern literature." — Fred Hobson

"Reminds us, as have previous scholars of Southern literature, that the literature of the American South is much more varied and variegated than we often imagine. We should be thankful for this reminder." — Mississippi Quarterly

From the Publisher

Contributors probe the centrality of social critique in the works of prominent southern writers and examine the transformation of southern culture represented in its literature. Essays challenge popular perceptions about the South and lend insight into the cultural and literary future of the region. Some authors examined are Alice Walker, Sherley Ann Williams, Raymond Andrews, and James Lee Burke. Jeffrey Folks teaches English at Doshisha University in Japan. Nancy Summers Folks is a freelance editor with 15 years of experience working with southern literature. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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