By Gary Richards
THE AMERICAN South arguably has the nationâs most vibrant, celebrated regional literature, and key among its writers are outstanding women, ranging from Harriet Jacobs, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Kate Chopin in the 19th century to LeAnne Howe, Jesmyn Ward, and Karen Russell in the 21st century.
The 20th century is a particularly rich era, and one thinks of a constellation of Southern women writers from this period whose works have become integral to our national literary heritage: Margaret Mitchellâs âGone with the Windâ (1936); Flannery OâConnorâs macabre short stories; Harper Leeâs âTo Kill a Mockingbirdâ (1960); Alice Walkerâs âThe Color Purpleâ (1982); and Dorothy Allisonâs âBastard Out of Carolinaâ (1992).
THE INVISIBILITY OF black women has been much on my mind of late. Asked recently to speak on the topic “Can women artists take back the nude from a voyeuristic male gaze as a site to represent their own subjectivity?” I have to discard the premise: from mass culture to high culture, white women may have been objects of the fetishizing gaze, but black women have had only the blank stare. In fact we feel lucky when we get to take our clothes off. Manet’s
Olympia, Picasso’s
Demoiselles d’Avignon, and Judy Chicago’s
Dinner Party, 1973–78, are landmarks in our unseeing erasure by both the multicolored male and the white female. I believe in the mathematics of myth, which is why I’m always asking, How many black women in this anthology? in this exhibit? in this picture? What are they made to signify? Of the 39 places at Chicago’s dinner table, 35 are set with plates painted with vaginas that glow miraculously. Sojourner Truth, the only black guest, must make it with
The Daily Yonder 8 Rural Books to Help You Get Through the Wintry Weeks at Home – Part 2 The Daily Yonder team comes back with more book recommendations for your reading pleasure. These rural novels, memoirs and short story collections are worth a spot on your reading list.
Last week we published a list of some of our favorite rural books to help get you through a tough February. But as temperatures gradually raise and the sun comes out, we believe that reading a great book, inside or outside, hasn’t lost its appeal.
Here are eight more rural books recommended by our colleagues at the Center for Rural Strategies and the Daily Yonder.
50 Black Writers Whose Impact Went Beyond the Page
By Rachel Cavanaugh, Stacker News
On 2/23/21 at 8:00 PM EST
Harris & Ewing/Interim Archives/Getty
African American authors have created a rich body of literature: fiction and nonfiction, essays, poetry, scholarly articles and more. The narratives they ve added to American storytelling have shifted perspectives and prompted fresh conversations; their writing has shaped how the Black experience is viewed and understood in America by readers of all races and backgrounds.
In the 19th century, African American literature was driven by narratives of slavery, many told from the perspective of escaped slaves such as Harriet Jacobs or Frederick Douglass. In the 1920s, as Black artists and intellectuals emerged following the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance produced a generation of authors who addressed issues of racism and segregation. By the middle of the century, Black authors played an important role in laying the foundatio