Coloring locals
Subtitle: racial formation in Kate Chopin's Youth's companion stories
By: Bonnie James Shaker.
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Iowa City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 158
Subjects: Chopin, Kate, 1851-1904 -- Criticism and interpretation; Women and literature -- Louisiana -- History -- 19th century; Local color in literature; Racism in literature; Race in literature; Louisiana -- In literature
Description: "Coloring Locals examines how the late nineteenth-century politics of gender, class, race, and ethnicity influenced Kate Chopin's writing for the major family periodical of her time.

Chopin's canonical status as a feminist rebel and reformer conflicts with the fact that one of her most supportive publishers throughout her life was the Youth's Companion, a juvenile periodical whose thoroughly orthodox "family values" contributed to its success as the longest-running and, at one time, most widely circulating periodical in nineteenth-century America. Not surprisingly, Chopin's Youth's Companion stories differ from her canonical texts in that they embrace and advance ideals of orthodox white femininity and masculinity.

Rather than viewing these two representations as being at odds with each other, Bonnie Shaker asserts that Chopin's endorsement of conventional gender norms is done in the service of a second political agenda beyond her feminism, one that can help the reader appreciate nuances of identity construction previously misunderstood or overlooked in the body of her work.".

"Making significant contributions to both the scholarship on Kate Chopin and that on race and gender construction, this sophisticated study will be of great interest to scholars and students of nineteenth-century ethnic and cultural studies as well as Chopin scholars."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [139]-146) and index.