Literary Criticism
Criticism /ˈkrɪtɪsɪz(ə)m/ n. 1800s. 2. The analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work. 2.1. The scholarly investigation of literary or historical texts to determine their origin or intended form.
Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives
Edited by Jean W. Cash & Richard Gaughran
“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.” - University of Mississippi Press
"The ‘Sweet Dark Heart’ of Louisiana: Individual Authenticity and Barb Johnson’s Working Class New Orleans”
Emily Langhorne
Like other Rough South writers, Barb Johnson is “not concerned with faded and fallen aristocrats” but instead focuses her writing on the working-class people who make up the world in which she has lived (Johnson, “An Interview with Barb Johnson). In More of this World or Maybe Another (2009), a collection of linked short stories, she offers glimpses into the lives of characters “who are living their lives well beyond the view of the tourist” in the “sweet dark heart” of a working-class New Orleans neighborhood (Johnson, “An Interview”). The collection centers on the life of Delia Delahoussaye, beginning at a high school dance in rural Louisiana and ending over two decades later in New Orleans. While many characters reappear frequently throughout the stories, Delia is the epicenter of the collection, and her presence ties the stories together.
Because of Johnson’s focus on working-class southerners, she has found a place in the Rough South canon; however, Louisiana bears little cultural resemblance to the rest of the American South. “The vibe in New Orleans is much ore European and African than Southern,” Johnson explains (“An Interview”).
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Check out this review in the Southern Review of Books.
Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature
Edited by Jean W. Cash & Keith Perry
"Essays in Rough South, Rural South describe and discuss the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward." - Amazon.
"Dorothy Allison: Revising the 'White Trash' Narrative"
Emily Langhorne
Dorothy Allison knows all about growing up "white trash." Born on April 11, 1949, in Greenville, South Carolina, she was born “the bastard daughter of a white woman from a desperately poor family.” Her unwed mother, only fifteen at the time, worked as a waitress.
Although she has only published one memoir, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995), all of Allison's work draws heavily upon her upbringing in the the working-class South. The intense poverty and harsh conditions of her childhood and adolescence are her central themes, and her work is largely concerned with the myth of poverty versus its reality. Through her characters and stories, she works to replace the stereotyped images of poverty with real ones conveying the difficulties of working-class existence. Her writing thus exposes the truth behind growing up "trash," calling attention to the facade that is white America's supposedly classless society.
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