Introduction -- "Spirit came through": Lee Clay Johnson / David Gates. "I ought to have worn overalls": the novels of Inman Majors in the millennial south / Scott D. Yarbrough -- Joe Samuel Starnes: a devoted disciple of the rough south gospel / Kevin Catalano -- Of all things sacred and sensual: the fiction of Jamie Quatro / Nick Ripatrazone -- Michael Farris Smith: "truckin' to success" / Jean W. Cash -- Difficult women: Tayari Jones and the recuperation of representations / Destiny O. Birdsong -- Home and the myth of reinvention in the fiction of Stephanie Powell Watts / Melody Pritchard -- Brian Panowich: music of the country / Jay Varner -- "The heart of the matter": blending fiction and history / Bes Stark Spangler -- Skip Horack: representing the people / Phillip Howerton -- Songs for the unsung: Jesmyn Ward's narratives of race, loss, and survival / Joan Wylie Hall -- "Depending on where you stop telling it": family and redemption in the novels of Wiley Cash / Scott Hamilton Suter -- "In your heart": the emotive landscapes and characters of David Armand's rough south / Dixon Hearne -- Karen Russell: a south without borders / Melanie Benson Taylor -- Beauty in brokenness: Steph Post's rough south noir / Amanda Dean Freeman -- "The right place for love": the fiction of Thomas Pierce / Richard Gaughran -- Landscapes of blood and desire: the fiction of Taylor Brown / Shawn E. Miller -- David Joy: listening through the violence / Rebecca Godwin -- "Spirit came through": Lee Clay Johnson / David Gates.
Summary:
"Contributions by Destiny O. Birdsong, Jean W. Cash, Kevin Catalano, Amanda Dean Freeman, David Gates, Richard Gaughran, Rebecca Godwin, Joan Wylie Hall, Dixon Hearne, Phillip Howerton, Emily D. Langhorne, Shawn E. Miller, Melody Pritchard, Nick Ripatrazone, Bes Stark Spangler, Scott Hamilton Suter, Melanie Benson Taylor, Jay Varner, and Scott D. Yarbrough Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives, an anthology of critical essays, introduces a new group of fiction writers from the American South. These fresh voices, like their twentieth-century predecessors, examine what it means to be a southerner in the modern world. These writers' works cover wide-ranging subjects and themes: the history of the region, the continued problems of the working-class South, the racial divisions that have continued, the violence of the modern world, and the difficulties of establishing a spiritual identity in a modern context. The approaches and styles vary from writer to writer, with realistic, place-centered description as the foundation of many of their works. They have also created new perspectives regarding point of view, and some have moved toward the inclusion of "magic realism" and even science fiction in their work. The nineteen essays in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers feature a handful of fiction writers who are already well known, such as National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward, Tayari Jones, Michael Farris Smith, and Inman Majors. Others deserve greater recognition, and, in many cases, works in this anthology will be the first pieces of analysis dedicated to writers and their work. Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers aims to alert scholars of southern literature, as well as the reading public, to an exciting and varied group of writers, while laying a foundation for future examination of these works"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.