Title: The scary Mason-Dixon Line
Description: New Yorker James Baldwin once declared that a black man can look at a map of the United States, contemplate the area south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and thus scare himself to death. In this book, the author a renowned literary scholar explores why black writers, whether born in Mississippi, New York, or elsewhere, have consistently both loved and hated the South. She explains that for these authors the South represents not so much a place or even a culture as a rite of passage. Not one of them can consider himself or herself a true African American writer without confronting the idea of the South in a decisive way. She considers native born black southerners Raymond Andrews, Ernest J. Gaines, Edward P. Jones, Tayari Jones, Yusef Komunyakaa, Randall Kenan, and Phyllis Alesia Perry, and nonsouthern writers James Baldwin, Sherley Anne Williams, and Octavia E. Butler. The works she examines date from Baldwin's Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964) to Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2003). By including Komunyakaa's poems and Baldwin's play, as well as male and female authors, she demonstrates that the writers' preoccupation with the South cuts across lines of genre and gender. Whether their writings focus on slavery, migration from the South to the North, or violence on southern soil, and whether they celebrate the triumph of black southern heritage over repression or castigate the South for its treatment of blacks, these authors cannot escape the call of the South. Indeed, she asserts that creative engagement with the South represents a defining characteristic of African American writing. A singular work by one of the foremost literary scholars writing today, this book demonstrates how history and memory continue to figure powerfully in African American literary creativity.
Subjects: African American authors, African Americans, African Americans in literature, American literature, Fear in literature, History, History and criticism, In literature, Literature and history, Psychological aspects, Psychological aspects of Racism, Psychological aspects of Slavery, Psychology, Race identity, Racism, Slavery, Noirs américains, S?dstaaten (Motiv), USA, Südstaaten (Motiv), Literatur, Dans la littérature, Schwarze, Auteurs noirs américains, Literature, Littérature et histoire, Littérature américaine, Südstaaten, 02779038x, American literature, african american authors, history and criticism, African americans, race identity, African americans, psychology, Southern states, in literature, American literature, african american authors, bibliography
Places: Southern States, United States
Time periods: 20th century