Real Folks: Race and Genre in the Great Depression / Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American Performance / The Angelic Mother and the Predatory Seductress: Poor White Women in Southern Literature of the Great Depression

2014 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 836-838
Author(s):  
H. Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Southern Literature ◽  
White Women ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Poor White ◽  
Depression Era

Selling Historic Natchez to Depression-Era Pilgrims

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-210
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
The World ◽  
Depression Era

This chapter recounts the early years of the Natchez Pilgrimage, a heritage tourism enterprise created by the Natchez Garden Club at the height of the Great Depression. The Pilgrimage dramatized a mix of decades-old southern racial ideology and white historical memory that was repackaged for 1930s consumption. Pilgrimage founder Katherine Miller and other leading clubwomen defined their community’s cultural image, while also redefining the meaning of traditional southern womanhood. The Pilgrimage is also the story of how one southern community’s selective expression of historical memory captivated white tourists eager to immerse themselves in the world of the Old South so vividly portrayed by popular writers and entertainers of the 1930s. The widespread appeal of the Pilgrimage home tours and pageant suggests the power of popular culture to shape a tenacious historical memory that remained in force for much of the twentieth century and lingers even today.

From “The Rise of Southern Redneck and White Trash Writers”1

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Bledsoe
Keyword(s):  
Southern Literature ◽  
White Women ◽  
White Men ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
White Trash ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Poor White ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New Generation

This chapter discusses the emergence of a new generation of southern writers who are giving voice to a different group of southerners, forcing their readers to reexamine long-held stereotypes and beliefs while challenging the literary roles traditionally assigned poor whites. According to Linda Tate, “traditionally, southern literature has been understood to be that written by white men and, on rare occasions, by white women—and, in almost all cases, by and about white southerners of the upper middle class.” This chapter looks at three new voices who write about the Rough South and the southern poor whites from within the class: Dorothy Allison, Larry Brown, and Timothy Reese McLaurin. The term “Rough South” refers to as the world of the redneck or white trash. The terms “redneck,” “white trash,” “cracker,” and “poor white” have all been used to describe certain white southerners.

West, Nathanael (1903–1940)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Meehan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
York City ◽  
Nathanael West ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Miss Lonelyhearts ◽  
Title Character

Nathanael West was an author and screenwriter whose work spanned the decade of the 1930s. He was born Nathan Weinstein on 17 October 1903 in New York City; his decision to change his name at the age of twenty-two reflects a life-long ambivalence toward his Jewish ancestry. He is best known as a novelist whose work teems with characters suffering from psychological traumas stemming from the bleak atmosphere of Depression-era America. He died tragically and in relative obscurity with his wife Eileen in an automobile accident outside of El Centro, California in 1940. Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), his second novel, is widely considered his best work. Unlike his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931) — which was influenced by French surrealism and was highly experimental in style — Miss Lonelyhearts is rooted in the everyday challenges of the Great Depression. The title character, whose actual name is never given, works as an advice columnist for a newspaper in New York City. Although he and others see the job as trivial, the desperate letters from readers begin to take a heavy emotional toll, leading him on an ill-fated search for meaning. Although the book’s plot is tragic, it also features elements of black comedy, a pervasive element of West’s work.

Pink and Sister

Goat Castle ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Cox
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African American Principals ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Edgar Allen Poe

This chapter introduces the African American principals in the book, Emily Burns and George Pearls a.k.a. Lawrence Williams. The history of the African American experience in Natchez, from slavery through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, is discussed. George lived in Chicago and when he came to Natchez in 1932 he introduced himself to Emily as Pinkney. He was called “Pink” and she was known in the community as “Sister.” Emily’s mother Nellie Black is introduced, as is their boarder, Edgar Allen Poe Newell or “Poe.” Both Emily and her mother were widows and domestics. All suffered from poverty, particularly in the depths of the Great Depression.

Photo-Narratives and the Poor White Self since the FSA

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-62
Author(s):  
Sarah Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Dorothy Allison ◽  
Farm Security Administration ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Poor White ◽  
The Relationship

After briefly outlining the work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers and writers during the Great Depression, the chapter turns to rephotography projects, namely that of Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, to explore the FSA’s legacy. The chapter interrogates the relationship and tension between aesthetics and activism as it examines several contemporary photo-narratives focused on Appalachia. In addition to critically discussing the work of Appalshop, it questions the representation of the poor in photo-narratives by, amongst others, Shelby Lee Adams, Tim Barnwell and Susan Lipper. The chapter focuses on questions of counter-visuality as it presents contemporary life-writing by writers such as Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, Barbara Robinette Moss and Janisse Ray, as a vehicle for producing counter-visual legacies.

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