Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind

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Calls Responses and tim a. ryan The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with theWind Calls and Responses ryan The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind Tim A. Ryan n this comprehensive, groundbreaking study,Tim A. Ryan explores how American novelists since World War I have imagined the institution of slavery and the experience of those involved in it. Complicating the common assumption that authentic black-authored fiction about slavery is starkly opposed to the traditional , racist fiction (and history) created by whites, Ryan suggests that discourses about American slavery are—and have always been—defined by connections rather than disjunctions. Ryan contends that African American writers didn’t merely reject and move beyond traditional portrayals of the black past but rather actively engaged in a dynamic dialogue with whiteauthored versions of slavery and existing historiographical debates. The result is an ongoing cultural conversation that transcends both racial and disciplinary boundaries and is akin to the call-and-response style of African American gospel music. Ryan addresses in detail more than a dozen major American novels of slavery, from the first significant modern fiction about the institution—Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and Arna Bontemps’s Black Thunder (both published in 1936)—to recent noteworthy novels on the topic—Edward P. Jones’s The Known World and Valerie Martin’s Property (both published in 2003). His insistence upon the necessity of interpreting novels about the past directly in relation to specific historical scholarship makes Calls and Responses especially compelling.He reads Toni Morrison’s Beloved not in opposition to a monolithic orthodoxy about slavery but in relation to specific arguments of controversial historian Stanley Elkins. Similarly, he analyzes William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner in terms of its rhetorical echoes of Frederick Douglass’s famous autobiographical narrative. Ryan shows throughout Calls and Responses how a variety of novelists—including Alex Haley, Octavia Butler, Ishmael Reed, Margaret Walker, and Frances Gaither— engage in a dynamic debate with each other and with such historians as Herbert Aptheker, Charles Joyner, Eugene and Elizabeth Genovese, and many others. A substantially new account of the development of American slavery fiction in the last century, Calls and Responses goes beyond merely exalting the expression of black voices and experiences and actually reconfigures the existing view of the American novel of slavery. Tim A. Ryan is an assistant professor of African American literature at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Southern Literary Studies Fred Hobson, Series Editor Jacket photograph by Arman Zhenikeyev Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge 70808 www.lsu.edu/lsupress Printed in u.s.a. Jacket design by Michelle A.Neustrom Literary Studies “This eloquent and illuminating book would be worth reading were it only a study of fictional treatments of slavery, but Ryan’s skillful interweaving of history and literature makes this essential reading for anyone interested in American servitude. Each page crackles with engaging analysis, deft assessments, and provocative conclusions.” —Douglas Egerton, author of Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America “From the clever trope of the title to the ambitious examination of just how intertextuality in writing on this subject works, Calls and Responses is precisely what has been missing in the critical literature about the central fact of the African American experience. This is a carefully considered, balanced, and altogether fresh approach to a fashionable but difficult subject.” —James H. Justus, author of The Achievement of Robert Penn Warren Calls Responses and Winner of the 2008 Jules and Frances Landry Award I© 2008 Louisiana State University Press Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge 70808 ISBN 978-0-8071-3322-4 > ì<(sk)k(=bddcce<+^-Ä-U-Ä-U LSU RyanJACKET.indd 1 3/14/08 11:33:51 AM Winner of the Jules and Frances Landry Award for 2008 recto i southern literary studies Fred Hobson, Series Editor calls and responses ii Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge calls responses and tim a. ryan the american novel of slavery since Gone with theWind iii For three remarkable women, Dee Anna Phares, Susan Ryan, and Octavia E. Butler Published by Louisiana State University Press Copyright © 2008 by Louisiana State University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing Designer: Michelle A. Neustrom Typeface: Adobe Jenson Pro Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Chapter 1 first appeared,in somewhat different form,as“Designs againstTara: Frances Gaither’s The Red Cock Crows and Other Counternarratives to Gone with the Wind,”Mississippi Quarterly 59 (Winter/Spring 2006), and is reprinted with permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ryan, Tim A., 1971– Calls and responses : the American novel of slavery since Gone with the wind / Tim A. Ryan. p. cm. — (Southern literary studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8071-3322-4 (alk. paper) 1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Slavery in literature. I. Title. PS374.S58R93 2008 813'.6—dc22 2007042885 The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

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