Rent 9780195085228 | The Oxford Book of the American South; Testimony, Memory, and Fiction | Edward L. Ayers; Bradley C. Mittendorf @knetbooks.com

Summary Table of Contents Author Biography

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 large audience. For example, Harriet A. Jacobs' book Inci... MOREdents 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." The editors have selected these readings, their Preface tells us, to convey "the passions that have surfaced time and again in more than two hundred years of Southern writing." Indeed, the struggles, defeats, and triumphs chronicled inThe Oxford Book of the American South speak not just to the South, but to all of the American experience. They document and evoke some of the most dramatic episodes in the nation's life

Preface

The Old South

(108)

Introductory Essay

(2)

from Travels

(3)

... MORE

William Bartram

from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

(5)

Olaudah Equiano

from Notes on the State of Virginia

(5)

Thomas Jefferson

from the Reverend Francis Asbury's Journal

(5)

Francis Asbury

from The Confessions of Nat Turner

(5)

Nat Turner

from Georgia Scenes

(9)

Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

from Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass

(9)

Fredrick Douglass

from Social Relations in Our Southern States

(4)

Daniel R. Hundley

from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

(15)

Harriet Jacobs

from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

(10)

Mark Twain

from The Mind of the South

(12)

W. J. Cash

from The Making of a Southerner

(3)

Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin

from The Confessions of Nat Turner

(11)

William Styron

from Dessa Rose

101

(10)

Sherley Anne Williams

The Civil War and Its Consequences

111

(150)

Introductory Essay

111

(3)

War

114

(80)

from The Civil War Diary of Sarah Moragan

114

(12)

Sarah Morgan

from "Co. Aytch"

126

(14)

Sam Watkins

from Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory

140

(10)

Ben Robertson

from Know Nothing

150

(10)

Mary Lee Settle

from The Legacy of the Civil War

160

(3)

Robert Penn Warren

from Jubilee

163

(8)

Margaret Walker

"Dragged Fighting from His Tomb"

171

(9)

Barry Hannah

"Shiloh"

180

(14)

Bobbie Ann Mason

Consequences

194

(67)

"Letter to the Union Convention, 1865"

194

(6)

Black Citizens of Tennessee

"Dave's Neckliss"

200

(11)

Charles W. Chesnutt

"The Little Convent Girl"

211

(7)

Grace King

"Desiree's Baby

218

(5)

Kate Chopin

from Up from Slavery

223

(10)

Booker T. Washington

from The Souls of Black Folk

233

(5)

W. E. B. Du Bois

from The Deliverance

238

(6)

Ellen Glasgow

"Wash"

244

(11)

William Faulkner

from Gone with the Wind

255

(6)

Margaret Mitchell

Hard Times

261

Introductory Essay

261

(2)

from I'll Take My Stand

263

(7)

Twelve Southerners

from "Boom Town"

270

(7)

Thomas Wolfe

"Kneel to the Rising Sun"

277

(20)

Erskine Caldwell

from Their Eyes Were Watching God

297

(9)

Zora Neale Hurston

"Death of a Traveling Salesman"

306

(12)

Eudora Welty

from Lanterns on the Levee

318

(11)

William Alexander Percy

from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

329

(6)

James Agee

from Black Boy

335

(19)

Richard Wright

from Invisible Man

354

Ralph Ellison

About the Editors:
Edward L. Ayers, born in North Carolina, was raised in Tennessee and attended the University of Tennessee and Yale University. Ayers has taught the history and culture of the American South at the University of Virginia since 1980. His The Promise of the New South won the Owsley Prize for the best book on the history of the South and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Bradley C. Mittendorf, born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a writer and political consultant in his native town. He attended Louisiana State University and the University of Virginia and is currently working on a project concerning Robert Penn Warren.

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