“Africanist Presence” and the Role of Black Bodies

Chapter 4, “‘Africanist Presence’ and the Role of Black Bodies,” taking its title and cue from Toni Morrison’s seminal study of race in American Literature, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, examines O’Connor’s exploration of the essential role played by African Americans in the construction of a white consciousness. It also considers the work of womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland on “enfleshing freedom” in which she meditates on the imaging of the black body in Western culture and its implications in the Christian Church. The chapter considers the difference between what anthropologist Mary Douglas refers to as “physical bodies” and “social bodies” and the ways in which these representations and perceptions of the body enter into O’Connor’s work (73). The chapter includes analysis of “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “The Artificial Nigger,” and “Judgement Day” (reprise).

The Failure and Promise of Communion

Chapter 5, “The Failure and Promise of Communion,” explores the theme of thwarted communion between the races that pervades O’Connor’s correspondence and fiction. Her relentless interest in portraying the failure and the hope of such communion is evident in “The Enduring Chill” and in her novel The Violent Bear It Away, as well as in other stories. The chapter concludes with a brief summation of the primary findings of the study as a whole and argues that O’Connor’s race-haunted work is a record of her commitment to trying to understand the complexity of the relationship between the races and to convey it faithfully.

Race, Politics, and the Double Mind: Flannery’s Correspondence versus O’Connor’s Fiction

Chapter, 2, “Race, Politics, and the Double Mind: Flannery’s Correspondence versus O’Connor’s Fiction,” provides necessary background for the origins of O’Connor’s ideas about race. It focuses on concepts of race O’Connor inherited, challenges to those ideas she may have encountered going to graduate school in Iowa and living in New York, and O’Connor’s response to the events of the Civil Rights movement. This chapter includes discussion of O’Connor’s correspondence, especially the letters exchanged between O’Connor and Maryat Lee and between O’Connor and Elizabeth Hester (both published and unpublished) and considers the light they shed on O’Connor’s attitudes. In assessing the inconsistency evident in O’Connor’s discussion of race in the letters and in the stories, the chapter includes discussion of speech act theory, particularly Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s differentiation between “natural” and “fictive” discourse. These considerations serve as foundation for an analysis of O’Connor’s treatment of race in some of her early stories, including “The Geranium” (reprise), “The Barber,” “Wildcat,” and “The Coat.”

“Whiteness Visible”: Critical Whiteness Studies and O’Connor’s Fiction

Chapter 1, “‘Whiteness Visible’: Critical Whiteness Studies and O’Connor’s Fiction,” summarizes the treatment of race in O’Connor criticism from the 1970s to the present, outlines some key concepts of racial formation theory and whiteness studies, and considers their potential relevance and application to O’Connor’s work. The chapter includes a brief history of the idea of race, an examination of the so-called “color line” and the racial code observed by whites and blacks in the South, and an exploration of O’Connor’s attitudes toward that code as evident in some of her letters and in her representations of black characters in her stories. The chapter includes analysis of her first and last stories, “The Geranium” and “Judgement Day.”

Introduction: Two Minds

Presents a general overview of the book’s argument concerning O’Connor’s relationship to race and surveys the current state of scholarship. Highlights the role that the unpublished letters have for the present study.

Theology, Religion, and Race: Constant Conversion and the Beginning of Vision

Chapter 3, “Theology, Religion, and Race: Constant Conversion and the Beginning of Vision,” considers the influence of theological concepts of race and the Church on O’Connor’s thinking about race and the application of current theological studies of racism to O’Connor’s work. This includes a review of the history of the Catholic Church’s attitudes toward race and segregation, especially in the South, discussion of the influence of the theological visions of William Lynch and Teilhard de Chardin on O’Connor’s thought, as well as consideration of theologian Brian Massingale’s and M. Shawn Copeland’s recent work on Catholic theological ethics and racial justice. The chapter also contains an analysis of “Revelation.”