Southern local color
Subtitle: stories of region, race, and gender
By: edited by Barbara C. Ewell and Pamela Glenn Menke ; with notes by Andrea Humphrey.
Contributors: Ewell, Barbara C.; Menke, Pamela Glenn, 1940-; Humphrey, Andrea.
Edition: printing (1)
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 323
ISBN-13: 9780820323176
Copyright date: 2002
Subjects: Short stories, American -- Southern States.; Race relations -- Fiction.; Sex role -- Fiction.; Southern States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction.
Genres: Fiction.
Description: Conflict, exoticism, sensuality, eccentricity, and the sheer differences of the American South pervade this lively anthology, the first in fifty years to focus exclusively on the nineteenth-century tradition of southern local color. Its thirty-one stories, spanning the 1870s through the early 1900s, represent some of the best southern fiction to appear during the great flowering of American local color writing.The fifteen authors included here are those most admired by their contemporaries. Modern readers may recognize Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening; Charles Chesnutt, the courageous and gifted African American writer; or Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit tales have remained continually in print. However some authors like suffragist Sarah Barnwell Elliott, are virtually unknown today, while others, like African Americans Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, are known primarily as poets or diarists.

The editors' extensive introduction locates the stories in the context of contemporary and current history and culture, and each selection of tales begins with detailed information on the author. Also included are bibliographies and extensive notes. Showcasing the many styles, topics, and settings of southern local color, the anthology reconnects us to an unjustly neglected literary tradition. As the editors make clear, such tales of the South were essential to post-Civil War America's struggle to address--yet contain--cultural and geographic variety, racial mixtures, and the just clamor of women and African Americans for equality.

From George Washington Cable's New Orleans to Thomas Nelson Page's Tidewater Virginia to the Appalachians imagined by Sherwood Bonner, these stories engage nation-shaping themes--war, segregation, immigration, depression, and suffrage--at the personal and community levels. In Southern Local Color we have a unique forum for pondering a timeless American question: how to reconcile our diversities with a unified national identity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-323).
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE 1; title: The Story of Bras-Coupe 5; title: SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) 30; title: A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It 34; title: CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON 39; title: Felipa 42; title: KATHARINE (SHERWOOD BONNER) MCDOWELL 63; title: Gran'mammy 65; title: Why Gran'mammy Didn't Like Pound-Cake 67; title: Jack and the Mountain Pink 71; title: JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 81; title: Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy 84; title: The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story 87; title: How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox 88; title: Where's Duncan? 90; title: MARY NOAILLES MURFREE (CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK) 100; title: The Star in the Valley 103; title: (PATRICK) LAFCADIO HEARN 121; title: Why Crabs Are Boiled Alive 123; title: A Creole Mystery 124; title: THOMAS NELSON PAGE 127; title: Unc' Edinburg's Drowndin': A Plantation Echo 130; title: GRACE KING 153; title: The Balcony 157; title: The Little Convent Girl 158; title: La Grande Demoiselle 165; title: MOLI,E E. MORE DAVIS 172; title: A Bamboula 174; title: CHARLES W. CHESNUTT 188; title: The Goophered Grapevine 191; title: Dave's Neckliss 203; title: The Passing of Grandison 214; title: SARAH BARNWELL ELOTT 230; title: The Heart of It 232; title: KATE CHOPIN 248; title: Desiree's Baby 251; title: La Belle Zoraide 257; title: In Sabine 263; title: The Storm 271; title: PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR 277; title: Nelse Hatton's Vengeance 281; title: The Lynching of Jube Benson 289; title: ALICE RUTH MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON 296; title: The Praline Woman 299; title: Tony's Wife 301; title: Sister Josepha 306; title: Appendix:; title: Further Readings in Southern Local Color 315; title: Bibliography 319.