"Closer to the truth than any fact" : memoir, memory, and Jim Crow /
Wallach (Georgia College and State Univ.) provides a fascinating look at literary memoirs that deal with US racism against African Americans. She rightly notes that historians have been loathe to accept memoirs as historical documents, since the genre is by nature subjective. However, she persuasive...
Clasificación: | Libro Electrónico |
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Autor principal: | |
Formato: | Electrónico eBook |
Idioma: | Inglés |
Publicado: |
Athens :
University of Georgia Press,
©2008.
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Temas: | |
Acceso en línea: | Texto completo |
Sumario: | Wallach (Georgia College and State Univ.) provides a fascinating look at literary memoirs that deal with US racism against African Americans. She rightly notes that historians have been loathe to accept memoirs as historical documents, since the genre is by nature subjective. However, she persuasively demonstrates that memoirs (as representative of "emotive inquiry") are indeed valuable primary documents, when analyzed properly. Wallach examines both black memoirists (Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates Jr.) and white memoirists (Willie Morris, Lillian Smith, and William Alexander Percy), investigating each independently and comparatively. The insights from her explications are remarkable, derived particularly through her use of theoretical and historiographical material. By maintaining that literary (as opposed to nonliterary) memoirs provide the deepest historical understanding expressly because literary critics can apply their disciplinary tools to mine the material, Wallach will undoubtedly provoke a lively debate over the comparable utility of other kinds of memoirs, such as popular, vernacular, or ethnographic. Likewise contentious may be her focus on southern rather than broadly US racism. J.B. Wolford University of Missouri--St. Louis distributed by Syndetics. |
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Descripción Física: | 1 online resource (x, 176 pages) |
Bibliografía: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-169) and index. |
ISBN: | 9780820337029 0820337021 1282552910 9781282552913 9786612552915 6612552913 |