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Contributions by Tanya Long Bennett, David Brauer, Cameron Williams Crawford, Emily Pierce Cummins, April Conley Kilinski, Justin Mellette, and Wendy Kurant Rollins As a white woman of means living in segregated Georgia in the first half of the twentieth century, Lillian Smith (1897–1966) surprised readers with stories of mixed-race love affairs, mob attacks on “outsiders,” and young female campers exploring their sexuality. Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith tracks the evolution of Smith from a young girls’ camp director into a courageous artist who could examine controversial topics frankly and critically while preserving a lifelong connection to the north Georgia mountains and people. She did not pull punches in her portrayals of the South and refused to obsess on an idealized past. Smith took seriously the artist’s role as she saw it—to lead readers toward a better understanding of themselves and a more fulfilling existence. Smith’s perspective cut straight to the core of the neurotic behaviors she observed and participated in. To draw readers into her exploration of those behaviors, she created compelling stories, using carefully chosen literary techniques in powerful ways. With words as her medium, she drew maps of her fictionalized southern places, revealing literally and metaphorically society’s disfunctions. Through carefully crafted points of view, she offers readers an intimate glimpse into her own childhood as well as the psychological traumas that all southerners experience and help to perpetuate. Comprised of seven essays by contemporary Smith scholars, this volume explores these fascinating aspects of Smith’s writings in an attempt to fill in the picture of this charismatic figure, whose work not only was influential in her time but also is profoundly relevant to ours.
Bringing together short stories, lectures, essays, op-ed pieces, interviews, andexcerpts from her longer fiction and nonfiction, A Lillian Smith Reader offers thefirst comprehensive collection of her work.
Author cites the evils of segregation for both white and colored people and gives the history of race relations from pre-Civil War days.
Prelude and aftermath of a lynching in Georgia, depicting the South's unsolved racial problem.
“A real-life racially motivated mass killing from 1946 is boldly and deeply reimagined [in this] incisive, gripping and empathetic novel” (Kirkus, starred review). Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters—Bertrand Johnson, one of the victims; Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator; and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie’s inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world, and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must confront both Jacks and his own demons. In this stirring and incisive narrative, Anthony Grooms seeks to advance the national dialogue on race relations. With complexity, satire, and surprising moments of levity, he explores what it means to redeem and be redeemed. Deeply probing the issues of American race violence, The Vain Conversation also speaks to the broader issues of oppression and violence everywhere. Foreword by poet, painter, and novelist Clarence Major. Afterward by bestselling author T. Geronimo Johnson.
James Wolcott’s career as a critic has been unmatched, from his early Seventies dispatches for The Village Voice to the literary coverage made him equally feared and famous to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair. Bringing together his best work from across the decades, this collection shows Wolcott as connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer. We begin with “O.K. Corral Revisited,” Wolcott’s career-launching account of the famed Norman Mailer–Gore Vidal dust-off on the original Dick Cavett Show. He goes on to consider (or reconsider) the towering figures of our culture, among them Lena Dunham Patti Smith, Johnny Carson, Woody Allen, and John Cheever. And we witness his legendary takedowns, which have entered into the literary lore of our time. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, Critical Mass offers a bracing taste of the real thing.
Today, most remember “California Girl” Lillian Frances Smith (1871–1930) as Annie Oakley’s chief competitor in the small world of the Wild West shows’ female shooters. But the two women were quite different: Oakley’s conservative “prairie beauty” persona clashed with Smith’s tendency to wear flashy clothes and keep company with the cowboys and American Indians she performed with. This lively first biography chronicles the Wild West showbiz life that Smith led and explores the talents that made her a star. Drawing on family records, press accounts, interviews, and numerous other sources, historian Julia Bricklin peels away the myths that enshroud Smith’s fifty-year career. Known as “The California Huntress” before she was ten years old, Smith was a professional sharpshooter by the time she reached her teens, shooting targets from the back of a galloping horse in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West. Not only did Cody offer $10,000 to anyone who could beat her, but he gave her top billing, setting the stage for her rivalry with Annie Oakley. Being the best female sharpshooter in the United States was not enough, however, to differentiate Lillian Smith from Oakley and a growing number of ladylike cowgirls. So Smith reinvented herself as “Princess Wenona,” a Sioux with a violent and romantic past. Performing with Cody and other showmen such as Pawnee Bill and the Miller brothers, Smith led a tumultuous private life, eventually taking up the shield of a forged Indian persona. The morals of the time encouraged public criticism of Smith’s lack of Victorian femininity, and the press’s tendency to play up her rivalry with Oakley eventually overshadowed Smith’s own legacy. In the end, as author Julia Bricklin shows, Smith cared more about living her life on her own terms than about her public image. Unlike her competitors who shot to make a living, Lillian Smith lived to shoot.
"An eye-opening account of southern white women who worked to challenge racial segregation. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice "Brings to life a small but important group of women who worked hard to change the South. . . . It will help to more fully explicate the motivation and experiences of women willing to challenge expected behavior in order to bring racial justice to the region and the nation."--American Historical Review "Stefani does a stellar job of chronicling southern white women?s confrontation with segregation and white supremacy. . . . A welcome contribution to the growing historiography of little-known civil rights heroines."--North Carolina Historical Review "An intriguing narrative of women whose lives were dramatically shaped by their work in such actions as the Little Rock Central High School desegregation campaign in 1957, the Albany movement in 1961, and Freedom Summer in 1964."--Journal of American History "Extensively researched. . . . A valuable resource for anyone studying white southern women, women?s civil rights activism, and women?s activism across race, religion, and time."--Journal of Southern History "Stefani redefines the proverbial 'southern lady' with a close look at over fifty white, anti-racist women. Concentrating on traits that linked these women across two generations, Unlikely Dissenters provides the first comprehensive study of how these southern women both employed and destroyed a stereotype."--Gail S. Murray, editor of Throwing Off the Cloak of Privilege "Presents a sophisticated and well-supported argument that women such as Lillian Smith, Virginia Durr, and Anne Braden challenged white supremacy at its core while knowing that they would be regarded as traitors to their race, region, and gender in doing so."--Peter B. Levy, author of Civil War on Race Street Between 1920 and 1970, a small but significant number of white women confronted the segregationist system in the American South, ultimately contributing to its demise. For many of these reformers, the struggle for African American civil rights was akin to their own complex process of personal emancipation from gender norms. As part of the white community, they wrestled with guilt as members of the "oppressor" group. Yet as women in a patriarchal society, they were also "victims." This paradoxical double identity enabled them to develop a special brand of activism that combatted white supremacy while emancipating them from white patriarchy. Using the 1954 Brown decision as a pivot, Anne Stefani examines and compares two generations of white women who spoke out against Jim Crow while remaining deeply attached to their native South. She demonstrates how their unique grassroots community-oriented activism functioned within--and even used to its advantage--southern standards of respectability.
The author recounts her many happy Chistmases spent with eight brothers and sisters, including one Christmas when the family hosted a chain gang and their guards