Download or read book A Literary History of Mississippi written by Lorie Watkins and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions by Ted Atkinson, Robert Bray, Patsy J. Daniels, David A. Davis, Taylor Hagood, Lisa Hinrichsen, Suzanne Marrs, Greg O'Brien, Ted Ownby, Ed Piacentino, Claude Pruitt, Thomas J. Richardson, Donald M. Shaffer, Theresa M. Towner, Terrence T. Tucker, Daniel Cross Turner, Lorie Watkins, and Ellen Weinauer Mississippi is a study in contradictions. One of the richest states when the Civil War began, it emerged as possibly the poorest and remains so today. Geographically diverse, the state encompasses ten distinct landform regions. As people traverse these, they discover varying accents and divergent outlooks. They find pockets of inexhaustible wealth within widespread, grinding poverty. Yet the most illiterate, disadvantaged state has produced arguably the nation's richest literary legacy. Why Mississippi? What does it mean to write in a state of such extremes? To write of racial and economic relations so contradictory and fraught as to defy any logic? Willie Morris often quoted William Faulkner as saying, "To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." What Faulkner (or more likely Morris) posits is that Mississippi is not separate from the world. The country's fascination with Mississippi persists because the place embodies the very conflicts that plague the nation. This volume examines indigenous literature, Southwest humor, slave narratives, and the literature of the Civil War. Essays on modern and contemporary writers and the state's changing role in southern studies look at more recent literary trends, while essays on key individual authors offer more information on luminaries including Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, and Margaret Walker. Finally, essays on autobiography, poetry, drama, and history span the creative breadth of Mississippi's literature. Written by literary scholars closely connected to the state, the volume offers a history suitable for all readers interested in learning more about Mississippi's great literary tradition.
Download or read book A Place Like Mississippi written by W. Ralph Eubanks and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is the book all of us Mississippi writers, dead and alive, need to read. It is indeed a strange but glorious sensation to see your literary and geographic lineage so beautifully and rigorously explored and valued as it's still being created.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir In A Place Like Mississippi,award-winning author and Mississippi native W. Ralph Eubanks treats us to a literary tour of the evocative landscapes that have inspired writers in every era. From Faulkner to Wright, Welty to Trethewey, Mississippi has been both a backdrop and a central character in some of the most compelling prose and poetry of modern literature. The journey unfolds on a winding path, touching the muddy Delta, the rolling Hill Country, down to the Gulf Coast, and all points between. In every corner of the state lie the settings that informed hundreds of iconic works. Immersing us in these spaces, Eubanks helps us understand that Mississippi is not only a state but a state of mind. Or as Faulkner is said to have observed, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”
Download or read book A New History of Mississippi written by Dennis J. Mitchell and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of the state in nearly four decades
Download or read book Rivers Memory And Nation building written by Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rivers figure prominently in a nation’s historical memory, and the Volga and Mississippi have special importance in Russian and American cultures. Beginning in the pre-modern world, both rivers served as critical trade routes connecting cultures in an extensive exchange network, while also sustaining populations through their surrounding wetlands and bottomlands. In modern times, “Mother Volga” and the “Father of Waters” became integral parts of national identity, contributing to a sense of Russian and American exceptionalism. Furthermore, both rivers were drafted into service as the means to modernize the nation-state through hydropower and navigation. Despite being forced into submission for modern-day hydrological regimes, the Volga and Mississippi Rivers persist in the collective memory and continue to offer solace, recreation, and sustenance. Through their histories we derive a more nuanced view of human interaction with the environment, which adds another lens to our understanding of the past.
Download or read book My Mississippi written by and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A father and son present an eloquent portrait and personal evocations of modern Mississippi in this book which contemplates the realities of the present day, assesses the most vital concerns of the citizens, gauges how the state has changed, and beholds what the state is like as it enters the 21st century. 105 full-color photos.
Download or read book Faulkner and History written by Jay Watson and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Faulkner remains a historian's writer. A distinguished roster of historians have referenced Faulkner in their published work. They are drawn to him as a fellow historian, a shaper of narrative reflections on the meaning of the past; as a historiographer, a theorist, and dramatist of the fraught enterprise of doing history; and as a historical figure himself, especially following his mid-century emergence as a public intellectual after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This volume brings together historians and literary scholars to explore the many facets of Faulkner's relationship to history: the historical contexts of his novels and stories; his explorations of the historiographic imagination; his engagement with historical figures from both the regional and national past; his influence on professional historians; his pursuit of alternate modes of temporal awareness; and the histories of print culture that shaped the production, reception, and criticism of Faulkner's work. Contributors draw on the history of development in the Mississippi Valley, the construction of Confederate memory, the history and curriculum of Harvard University, twentieth-century debates over police brutality and temperance reform, the history of modern childhood, and the literary histories of anti-slavery writing and pulp fiction to illuminate Faulkner's work. Others in the collection explore the meaning of Faulkner's fiction for such professional historians as C. Vann Woodward and Albert Bushnell Hart. In these ways and more, Faulkner and History offers fresh insights into one of the most persistent and long-recognized elements of the Mississippian's artistic vision.
Download or read book A place called Mississippi written by and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with serendipitous connections and contrasts, this volume of Mississippiana covers four hundred years. It begins with a selection from "A Gentleman from Elvas," written in 1541, and ends with an essay the novelist Ellen Douglas wrote in 1996 on the occasion of the Atlanta Olympic games. In between is a chronology of some one hundred nonfictional narratives that portray the distinctiveness of life in Mississippi. Most are reprinted, but some are published here for the first time. Each section of this anthology reveals an aspect of Mississippi's past or present. Here are narratives that depict the settlement of the land by pioneers, the lasting heritage of the Civil War, the pleasures and the pastimes of Mississippians, their food, art, rituals, and religion, the terrain and the travelers, and the conflicts that brought enormous changes to both the landscape and the population. In its wide cultural perspective, A Place Called Mississippi includes an early description of the Chickasaws, a narrative of a former slave, "Soggy" Sweat's famous "Whiskey Speech" on Prohibition, and an account of how W. C. Handy discovered the blues in a deserted train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi. Among the selections are narratives by Jefferson Davis, Belle Kearney, Walter Anderson, Ida B. Wells, Richard Wright, Craig Claiborne, Richard Ford, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty. Written by and about blacks, whites, Native Americans, and others, these fascinating accounts convey a variety of impressions about a real place and about real people whose colorful history is large, ever-changing, and ever-mystifying.
Download or read book Mississippi written by Westley F. Busbee, Jr and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Mississippi: A History features a series of revisions and updates to its comprehensive coverage of Mississippi state history from the time of the region’s first inhabitants into the 21st century. Represents the only available comprehensive textbook on Mississippi history specifically for use in college-level courses Features an engaging narrative mix of topical and chronological chapters Includes chapter objectives that may be used by professors and students Offers coverage of Mississippi’s major political, economic, social, and cultural developments Presents two entirely new chapters on important 21st-century developments in Mississippi Contains expanded coverage of slavery in Mississippi history Includes completely up-to-date chapter sources, selected bibliography, and subject index
Download or read book Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society written by Mississippi Historical Society and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mississippi Home places written by Elmo Howell and published by Roscoe Langford. This book was released on 1988 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notes on literature and history.
Download or read book A Place Like Mississippi written by W. Ralph Eubanks and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated tour of the landscapes of Mississippi that have inspired the state’s many lauded writers, from Faulkner and Welty to Morris and Ward.
Download or read book The Mississippi Book of Quotations written by David Crews and published by Nautilus. This book was released on 2022-03-09 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Touring Literary Mississippi written by Black, Patti Carr and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Deer Creek Drive written by Beverly Lowry and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stunning true story of a murder that rocked the Mississippi Delta and forever shaped one author’s life and perception of home. “Mix together a bloody murder in a privileged white family, a false accusation against a Black man, a suspicious town, a sensational trial with colorful lawyers, and a punishment that didn’t fit the crime, and you have the best of southern gothic fiction. But the very best part is that the story is true.” —John Grisham In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home: stabbed at least 150 times and left facedown in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered. When Dickins herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted, signed, and circulated, and after only six years, the governor of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickins an indefinite suspension of her sentence and she was set free. In Deer Creek Drive, Beverly Lowry—who was ten at the time of the murder and lived mere miles from the Thompsons’ home—tells a story of white privilege that still has ramifications today, and reflects on the brutal crime, its aftermath, and the ways it clarified her own upbringing in Mississippi.
Download or read book River of Dreams written by Thomas Ruys Smith and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even in the decades before Mark Twain enthralled the world with his evocative representations of the Mississippi, the river played an essential role in American culture and consciousness. Throughout the antebellum era, the Mississippi acted as a powerful symbol of America's conception of itself -- and the world's conception of America. As Twain understood, "The Mississippi is well worth reading about." Thomas Ruys Smith's River of Dreams is an examination of the Mississippi's role in the antebellum imagination, exploring its cultural position in literature, art, thought, and national life. Presidents, politicians, authors, poets, painters, and international celebrities of every variety experienced the Mississippi in its Golden Age. They left an extraordinary collection of representations of the river in their wake, images that evolved as America itself changed. From Thomas Jefferson's vision for the Mississippi to Andrew Jackson and the rowdy river culture of the early nineteenth century, Smith charts the Mississippi's shifting importance in the making of the nation. He examines the accounts of European travelers, including Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray, whose views of the river were heavily influenced by the world of the steamboat and plantation slavery. Smith discusses the growing importance of visual representations of the Mississippi as the antebellum period progressed, exploring the ways in which views of the river, particularly giant moving panoramas that toured the world, echoed notions of manifest destiny and the westward movement. He evokes the river in the late antebellum years as a place of crime and mystery, especially in popular writing, and most notably in Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man. An epilogue discusses the Mississippi during the Civil War, when possession of the river became vital, symbolically as well as militarily. The epilogue also provides an introduction to Mark Twain, a product of the antebellum river world who was to resurrect its imaginative potential for a post-war nation and produce an iconic Mississippi that still flows through a wide and fertile floodplain in American literature. From empire building in the Louisiana Purchase to the trauma of the Civil War, the Mississippi's dominant symbolic meanings tracked the essential forces operating within the nation. As Smith shows in this groundbreaking work, the story of the imagined Mississippi River is the story of antebellum America itself.
Download or read book Death in the Delta written by Molly Walling and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up, Molly Walling could not fathom the source of the dark and intense discomfort in her family home. Then in 2006 she discovered her father's complicity in the murder of two black men on December 12, 1946, in Anguilla, deep in the Mississippi Delta. Death in the Delta tells the story of one woman's search for the truth behind a closely held, sixty-year old family secret. Though the author's mother and father decided that they would protect their three children from that past, its effect was profound. When the story of a fatal shoot-out surfaced, apprehension turned into a devouring need to know. Each of Walling's trips from North Carolina to the Delta brought unsettling and unexpected clues. After a hearing before an all-white grand jury, her father's case was not prosecuted. Indeed, it appeared as if the incident never occurred, and he resumed his life as a small-town newspaper editor. Yet family members of one of the victims tell her their stories. A ninety-three-year-old black historian and witness gives context and advice. A county attorney suggests her family's history of commingling with black women was at the heart of the deadly confrontation. Firsthand the author recognizes how privilege, entitlement, and racial bias in a wealthy, landed southern family resulted in a deadly abuse of power followed by a stifling, decades-long cover up. Death in the Delta is a deeply personal account of a quest to confront a terrible legacy. Against the advice and warnings of family, Walling exposes her father's guilty agency in the deaths of Simon Toombs and David Jones. She also exposes his gift as a writer and creative thinker. The author, grappling with wrenching issues of family and honor, was long conflicted about making this story public. But her mission became one of hope that confronting the truth might somehow move others toward healing and reconciliation.
Download or read book Mississippi Writings written by Mark Twain and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984-05-31 with total page 1104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
