Bayonne or The Yoknapatawpha of Ernest Gaines

Abstract This paper will explore the representation of men’s aging experiences in contemporary U.S. fiction. While most gender-ed approaches to aging have focused on women, which has contributed to the cultural invisibility of older men, this study focuses on men’s aging experiences as men, thus challenging the inverse correlation between masculinity and aging. To do so, the study draws on a selected number of contemporary U.S. male-authored fictional works, which question the widely-held assumption that aging is a lesser concern for men, or that men and women’s aging experiences may be simply defined as opposed. The literary corpus includes male authors from different backgrounds so as to illustrate how (self-)representations of aging men vary according not only to gender but also class (Richard Ford), race (Ernest Gaines), and sexual orientation (Edmund White), amongst other factors. The presentation will thus end up challenging the conventional equation of men’s aging processes with (sexual) decline, exemplifying their plurality as well as irreducible contradictions.

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Wiley Cash

Writing Appalachia ◽

10.5810/kentucky/9780813178790.003.0093 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 630-634

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

North Carolina ◽

William Faulkner ◽

Flannery O'connor ◽

University Of North Carolina ◽

Bobbie Ann Mason ◽

Thomas Wolfe ◽

Ernest Gaines ◽

University Of Louisiana ◽

The University

Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Wiley Cash grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina. He earned a BA from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, an MA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. At Louisiana, he studied with Ernest Gaines, an influence on his thinking about the importance of place in fiction. Cash identifies early twentieth-century Appalachian author Thomas Wolfe and southern authors William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Bobbie Ann Mason as other sources of his interest in place....

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INCARCERATION, TRANSFORMATION AND AWARENESS IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN NOVEL

Gender Questions ◽

10.25159/2412-8457/820 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 62-78

Author(s):

Mariam Youssef

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Black Male ◽

Richard Wright ◽

Black Masculinity ◽

James Baldwin ◽

The Novel ◽

American Novel ◽

American Novels ◽

Ernest Gaines ◽

Male Incarceration

Â This article examines the theme of black male incarceration in the African American novel. Black male incarcerated characters are frequently presented as the most socially aware characters in the novel, in spite of their isolation. In different African American novels, black male incarcerated characters experience a transformation as a result of their incarceration that leads to a heightened awareness of their marginalisation as black men. Because of their compromised agency in incarceration, these characters are not able to express black masculinity in traditional ways. Using novels by Richard Wright, James Baldwin, John A. Williams and Ernest Gaines, I argue that black male incarcerated characters use their heightened awareness as an alternative method of expressing black masculinity.

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Ernest Gaines' Materials: Place, People, Author

MELUS ◽

10.2307/467504 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 75 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Mary Ellen Doyle

Keyword(s):

Ernest Gaines

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Curriculum as a Place of Turmoil: Deconstructing the Anguish in Walker Percy's Feliciana and Ernest Gaines' Pointe Coupee

Curriculum Inquiry ◽

10.2307/1179952 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 24 (4) ◽

pp. 437 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Patrick Slattery ◽

Kevin Daigle

Keyword(s):

Ernest Gaines

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Houses of the Spirit

10.1093/oso/9780190646547.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

John Gatta

Keyword(s):

Nathaniel Hawthorne ◽

Willa Cather ◽

Harriet Beecher Stowe ◽

Critical Role ◽

Marilynne Robinson ◽

Ernest Gaines

Domiciles ordinarily represent the first space that humans occupy, structures through which they begin to realize their own being and relation to the larger world. It is also in and through houses that humans may first experience themselves as souls, gaining sacramental intimations of a spirituality mediated through yet also beyond the materiality of their primal shelter. This chapter reflects on the diverse ways in which house structures, even as they are stationed in space, play a critical role in the spiritual journeying of writers such as Henry Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. With reference to fictional works by Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Ernest Gaines, this chapter also reflects on the problematic complications of humankind’s relation to home places—that is, on what it means to be displaced and the existential consequence of encountering former houses that are no longer homes.

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