Mixed Race Studies

Charles W. Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays

The Library of America
2002
939 pages
8.1 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
Hardcover ISBN-10: 1931082065; ISBN-13: 978-1931082068

Edited by

Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English and African-American Studies
Harvard University

Before Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, before James Weldon Johnson and James Baldwin, Charles W. Chesnutt broke new ground in American literature with his innovative exploration of racial identity and his use of African American speech and folklore. Rejecting his era’s genteel hypocrisy about miscegenation, lynching, and “passing,” Chesnutt laid bare the deep contradictions at the heart of American attitudes toward race and history, and in the process created the modern African American novel. The Library of America presents the best of Chesnutt’s fiction and nonfiction in the largest and most comprehensive edition ever published, featuring a newly researched chronology of the writer’s life.

The Conjure Woman (1899) introduced Chesnutt to the public as a writer of “conjure” tales that explore black folklore and supernaturalism. In such stories as “The Goophered Grapevine” and “The Conjurer’s Revenge,” the storyteller Uncle Julius reveals a world of fantastic powers and occult influence. That same year, Chesnutt published The Wife of His Youth, and Other Stories of the Color Line, a collection set in his native North Carolina that examines the legacies of slavery and Reconstruction at the turn of the century.

His first novel, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) dramatizes the emotional turmoil and inevitable conflicts brought on racial passing. Through the agonizing fate of Rena Walden, a beautiful woman in search of her own identity, Chesnutt exposes the destructive consequences of the legal and social fictions surrounding race in the post-bellum South.

The Marrow of Tradition (1901), Chesnutt’s masterpiece, is a powerful and bitter novel about the harsh reassertion of white dominance in a Southern town. Based on the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina, the book reveals the political underpinnings of the emerging segregationist status quo through the story of two secretly related families, one black, one white. Neglected in its own time, The Marrow of Tradition has been recognized increasingly as a unique and multilayered depiction of the hidden dynamics of a society giving way to violence.

Nine uncollected short stories, including all the Uncle Julius tales omitted from The Conjure Woman, round out the volume’s fiction. A selection of essays, mixing forceful legal argument and political passion, highlight Chesnutt’s prescient views on the paradoxes and future prospects of race relations in American and the definition of race itself. Also included is the revealing autobiographical essay written late in his life, “Post-Bellum—Pre-Harlem.”

Table of Contents

• The Conjure Woman [1899]
  • The Goophered Grapevine
  • Po’ Sandy
  • Mars Jeems’s Nightmare
  • The Conjurer’s Revenge
  • Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny
  • The Gray Wolf’s Ha’nt
  • Hot-Foot Hannibal
• The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line [1899]
  • The Wife of His Youth
  • Her Virginia Mammy
  • The Sheriff’s Children
  • A Matter of Principle
  • Cicely’s Dream
  • The Passing of Grandison
  • Uncle Wellington’s Wives
  • The Bouquet
  • The Web of Circumstance
• The House Behind the Cedars [1900]
• The Marrow of Tradition [1901]
• Uncollected Stories
  • Dave’s Neckliss [1889]
  • A Deep Sleeper [1893]
  • Lonesome Ben [1900]
  • The Dumb Witness [ca. 1900]
  • The March of Progress [1901]
  • Baxter’s Procrustes [1904]
  • The Doll [1912]
  • White Weeds
  • The Kiss
• Selected Essays
  • What is a White Man [1889]
  • The Future American [1900]
  • Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the Modern South [1901]
  • Charles W. Chesnutt’s Own View of His New Story, The Marrow of Tradition [1901]
  • The Disfranchisement of the Negro [1903]
  • The Courts and the Negro [1908]
  • Post-Bellum-Pre-Harlem [1931]

City of Broken Promises

Hong Kong University Press
1967
320 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-962-209-076-7
ebook ISBN: 978-988-8053-59-9

Austin Coates (1922-1997)

The city is Macao, the Portuguese settlement on the China Coast, as it was more than 200 years ago. The promises are those made by Englishmen to marry their Macao mistresses, only to leave them abandoned and their children bastards.

Martha Merop and her English lover are unique in this period. He, son of the founder of Lloyd’s and cousin of the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, was one of the first merchants to oppose the trade in opium. She, Chinese, abandoned at birth and sold into prostitution at the age of thirteen, became an international trader in her own right, the richest woman on the China Coast and Macao’s greatest public benefactress.

This moving novel that captures the time and place so convincingly is a historical reconstruction of the years 1780 to 1795 when the two were together. It is based on oral tradition handed down through generations in Macao, and on documents that survive about them in Macao, Lisbon and London. Austin Coates identified Martha Merop’s lover, about whom little was known. The documents about him confirmed the traditional Macao story, and the outcome was this book.

Absalom, Absalom!

Random House
1936
432 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-679-73218-1

William Faulkner

First published in 1936, Absalom, Absalom! is William Faulkner’s ninth novel and one of his most admired. It tells the story of Thomas Sutpen and his ruthless, single-minded attempt to forge a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi, in 1830. Although his grand design is ultimately destroyed by his own sons, a century later the figure of Sutpen continues to haunt young Quentin Compson, who is obsessed with his family legacy and that of the Old South. “Faulkner’s novels have the quality of being lived, absorbed, remembered rather than merely observed,” noted Malcolm Cowley. “Absalom, Absalom! is structurally the soundest of all the novels in the Yoknapatawpha series—and it gains power in retrospect.” This edition follows the text of Absalom, Absalom! as corrected in 1986 under the direction of Faulkner expert Noel Polk and features a new Foreword by John Jeremiah Sullivan.

Washed in the Blood

Mercer University Press
October 2011
420 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9780881462579

Lisa Alther

This unique three-part novel assumes that, regardless of what Americans learn in school, the Southeast was not a barren wilderness when the English arrived at Jamestown. It was full of Native Americans, other Europeans, and Africans who were there for various reasons. Based on extensive research into the racial mixing that occurred in the early years of southeastern settlement, this provocative multi-generational story shows that these people did not simply vanish, but that many were absorbed into the new communities that gradually formed throughout the southeast, becoming “white” whenever their complexions allowed. The inability to accept their true heritages illustrates the high price many of these people paid for their way of life. Diego Martin arrives in 1567 in the American Southeast—the region the Spaniards call La Florida—as a hog drover with a Spanish exploring party. The leader of the expedition turns against him and abandons him to the wilderness, where friendly natives rescue him. Daniel Hunter, a Quaker from Philadelphia, sets up a school among these “disadvantaged” mountain people and falls in love with a Martin daughter. Later, Daniel’s descendants are living in the same town, though with little awareness of their ancestral past. The Martin family has split in two, the merchants in town denying any relationship to their racially mixed cousins on Mulatto Bald. A young woman from town, Galicia, falls in love with a young man from the bald, Will, not realizing that he is her cousin. They marry, have a daughter, and move to a new industrial center, becoming prominent citizens. When Will’s son from a teenage liaison appears at his door, he invites him in, unwittingly setting the stage for a forbidden love between his unacknowledged son and his cherished daughter, neither of whom realizes that they are half-siblings. This is a novel you will not be able to put down without wondering “Where will it take me next?”

Table of Contents

• Part I – The Swine King: A. D. 1567
  • 1-The San Jorge
  • 2 – Landfall
  • 3 – Santo Domingo
  • 4 – Santa Elena
  • 5 – Orista
  • 6 – Cofitachequi
  • 7 – Joara
  • 8 – Cauchi
  • 9 – Land of the Lost
  • 10 – The Cave
• Part II – The Squabble State
  • 1 – The Five-Chicken Baby: 1818
  • 2 – Couchtown: August 1837
  • 3 – The Shenandoah: October 1837
  • 4 – Mulatto Bald: October 1837
  • 5 – Baptism by Fire: November 1837
  • 6 – The Frost Moon: December 1837
  • 7 – Seedbeds: April 1838
  • 8 – Soldiers’Joy: June 1838
  • 9 – The Wilderness Road: July 1838
  • 10 – Squatters: October 1838
• Part III – Passing Fancy
  • 1 – The Ringer: August 1909
  • 2 – Leesville: October 1909
  • 3 – Palestine: February 1911
  • 4 – Hijacked Happiness: March 1911
  • 5 – Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: April 1911
  • 6 – Homecoming: December 1911
  • 7 – Mongrels: August 1913
  • 8 – A Roll of the Dice: November 1913
  • 9 – The Perils of Pauline: March 1914
  • 10 – Holston: May 1914
  • 11 – Half-Breeds: 1920
  • 12 – Home to Roost: 1927
  • 13 – Mountain Meadows: 1930
  • 14 – The Plantation Ball: 1930

Diamond Grill (10th Anniversary Edition)

NeWest Press
Fall 2006
208 pages
paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-897126-11-0

Fred Wah

This story of family and identity, migration and integration, culture and self-discovery is told through family history, memory, and the occasional recipe.

Diamond Grill is a rich banquet where Salisbury steak shares a menu with chicken fried rice, and bird’s nest soup sets the stage for Christmas plum pudding; where racism simmers behind the shiny clean surface of the action in the cafe.

An exciting new edition of Fred Wah’s best-selling bio-fiction, on the 10th anniversary of its original publication, with an all new afterword by the author and the same pagination as the original publication.

Inheritance, A Novel

Hamilton Stone Editions
2011-11-15
308 pages
9 x 6 x 1 inches
ISBN: 978-0-9801786-8-5

Jane Lazarre

Jane Lazarre’s compelling novel explores America’s mixed racial history through the lives of four families whose fates are intertwined across several generations from slavery to the present. Unflinching in its description of the horrors of slavery and racism as well as the taboos on all sides of the racial divide,the novel moves us in the present, and prepares us for the future.

A Free Man of Color

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
October 2011
112 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4566-6

John Guare

John Guare’s new play is astonishing, raucous, and panoramic. A Free Man of Color is set in boisterous New Orleans prior to the historic Louisiana Purchase. Before law and order took hold and class, racial, and political lines were drawn, New Orleans was a carnival of beautiful women, flowing wine, and pleasure for the taking. At the center of this Dionysian world is the mulatto Jacques Cornet, who commands men, seduces women, and preens like a peacock. But it is 1801 and the map of New Orleans is about to be redrawn. The Louisiana Purchase brings American rule and racial segregation to the chaotic, colorful world of Jacques Cornet and all that he represents, turning the tables on freedom and liberty.

The Memory of Love

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
January 2011
464 pages
Cloth ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-1965-0
Paperback ISBN 13: 978-0-8021-4568-0

Aminatta Forna

• Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book
• Finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction
• An Essence Book Club Pick

From the award-winning author of The Devil That Danced on the Water and Ancestor Stones comes The Memory of Love, a beautiful and masterfully accomplished novel about the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of love.

Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love has been hailed as a book of rare beauty and importance, and was shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. With astounding depth and elegance, it takes the reader through the haunting atmosphere of a country at war, delicately intertwining the powerful stories of two generations of African life.

In contemporary Freetown, Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to keep. In the capital hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer by Adrian, a British psychiatrist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories.

A work of breathtaking writing and rare wisdom, The Memory of Love seamlessly weaves together the lives of these three men to create a story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past—and, at the end of it all, the very nature of love.

Half-Blood Blues

Picador (an imprint of Macmillan)
2011-09-03
304 pages
8.5 X 5.5 X 0.9 in
Cloth ISBN:9780887627415
Paperback ISBN: ISBN: 9781250012708

Esi Edugyan

• Winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize

Paris, 1940.  A brilliant jazz musician, Hiero, is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again.  He is twenty years old.  He is a German citizen.  And he is black.

Fifty years later, his friend and fellow musician, Sid, must relive that unforgettable time, revealing the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that sealed Hiero’s fate.  From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of  Paris—where the legendary Louis Armstrong makes an appearance—Sid, with his distinctive and rhythmic German-American slang, leads the reader through a fascinating world alive with passion, music and the spirit of resistance.

Half-Blood Blues, the second novel by an exceptionally talented young writer, is an entrancing, electric story about jazz, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.

Last Child

Henry Holt and Company (an imprint of Macmillan)
October 2005
240 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 240 pages,
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8050-7739-1, ISBN10: 0-8050-7739-1
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-4299-3709-2, ISBN10: 1-4299-3709-2

Michael Spooner, Director
Utah State University Press

A mixed-race girl must grow up quickly when danger threatens her world

Rosalie’s biggest problem used to be her own divided feelings. The constant tug-of-war between her white half and her Native American half is hard. She even has two names: Rosalie when she’s at the fort with her father and Last Child when she’s in the village with her mother.

But now a steamboat has carried smallpox into Rosalie’s world—and the Mandans have no resistance to the disease. Suddenly the name Last Child is all too real.

Set during the smallpox epidemic of 1837, this is the powerful story of a mixed-race girl fighting her way into adulthood against all odds.