Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith

Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith PDF Author: Tanya Long Bennett
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149683688X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
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.

Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith

Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith PDF Author: Tanya Long Bennett
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149683688X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

A Lillian Smith Reader

A Lillian Smith Reader PDF Author: Lillian Eugenia Smith
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820349984
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
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.

Killers Of The Dream

Killers Of The Dream PDF Author: Lillian Smith
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393311600
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Author cites the evils of segregation for both white and colored people and gives the history of race relations from pre-Civil War days.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author: Lillian Eugenia Smith
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156856362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Prelude and aftermath of a lynching in Georgia, depicting the South's unsolved racial problem.

The Vain Conversation

The Vain Conversation PDF Author: Anthony Grooms
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611178835
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
“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.

Now is the Time

Now is the Time PDF Author: Lillian Eugenia Smith
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781604736472
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description


Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Memory of a Large Christmas

Memory of a Large Christmas PDF Author: Lillian Smith
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820318424
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
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

America's Best Female Sharpshooter

America's Best Female Sharpshooter PDF Author: Julia Bricklin
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806158018
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
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.

Critical Mass

Critical Mass PDF Author: James Wolcott
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767930630
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
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.