The Oxford Book of the American South: Testimony, Memory, and Fiction
by Edward L. Ayers, Bradley C. Mittendorf (Editor)
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The Oxford Book of the American South resonates with the words of black people and white, women and men, the powerless as well as the powerful. The collection presents the most telling fiction and nonfiction produced in the South from the late eighteenth century to the present. Renowned authors such as James Agee, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, Lee Smith, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor appear in these pages, but so do people whose writing did not immediately reach a show more large audience. For example, Harriet A. Jacobs' book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which is now recognized as one of the most illuminating narratives of a former slave, was neglected for generations. And Sarah Morgan's powerful Civil War Diary has only recently come to widespread attention. The Oxford Book of the American South presents compelling autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and journalism as well as stories and selections from novels, and runs the spectrum from the conservative to the radical, the traditional to the innovative. Editors Edward L. Ayers and Bradley C. Mittendorf have arranged these diverse readings so that they fit together into a rich mosaic of Southern life and history. The sections of the book - The Old South, The Civil War and Its Consequences, Hard Times, and The Turning - unfold a vivid record of life below the Mason-Dixon line. We see the antebellum period both from the perspective of those who experienced it first-hand, such as Thomas Jefferson and former slaves Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, and then from the perspective of authors looking back on that era, including William Styron and Sherley Anne Williams. Likewise, we see the Civil War through the eyes of witnesses such as Sam Watkins, through the eyes of later writers trying to make sense of the conflict, such as Robert Penn Warren, and through the eyes of those using the war's intense passions to fuel their fiction, such as Margaret Mitchell and Barry Hannah. The classic authors of the Southern Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s appear here in the context of the hard times in which they wrote. The years since World War II are chronicled in the powerful words of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," George Garrett's "Good-bye, Good-bye, Be Always Kind and True," and Peter Taylor's "The Decline and Fall of the Episcopal Church, in the Year of Our Lord 1952." show lessTags
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33+ Works 1,693 Members
Edward L. Ayers's The Thin Fight of Freedom completes his prize-winning history of the Civil War and its aftermath in the Great Valley that began with In the Presence of Mine Enemies. Ayers's superb history has been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, and the Avery O. Craven Award of the Organization of American Historians. A recipient show more of the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, Ayers is the Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus of the University of Richmond. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Important places
- Southern States, USA
- Original language
- English
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- 141
- Popularity
- 231,333
- Rating
- (4.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
