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Bibliothek | Materialtyp | Regalnummer | Anzahl untergeordneter Datensätze | Regalstandort | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Suche... Central | Book | CHESNUTT | 1 | Stacks | Suche... Unknown | Suche... Unavailable |
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Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung
In a novel rejected by a major publisher in the late nineteenth century as too shocking for its time, Charles W. Chesnutt challenges the notion that race, class, education, and gender must define where one's rightful place in society should be. Both a romance and a mystery, Mandy Oxendine tells the compelling story of two fair-skinned, racially mixed lovers who choose to live on opposite sides of the color line; Tom Lowrey remains in the black community, and Mandy Oxendine chooses to pass for white. An alluring young woman, Mandy also is courted by an unscrupulous white landowner who is killed while sexually assaulting her. Critics have tended to characterize Chesnutt as being of the Uncle Tom school of African-American writers. Publication of Mandy Oxendine, set aside by the author and left untranscribed in an archive for years, may do much to revise that interpretation.
Rezensionen (3)
Booklist-Rezension
A century ago, Chesnutt's short first novel was rejected for publication, and to read it is to think we know why. It begins as an intriguing perspective on the color line in early post^-Civil War North Carolina and on two--its white-appearing African American heroine and hero--who strain against it. Then, after a mysterious murder, it becomes plot-heavy and turns into a melodrama, including a near-lynching, that ends all too abruptly. As Charles Hackenberry convincingly explains in an introduction to the finally published story, the change in tone and texture from socially concerned psychological realism to stilted theatricality probably isn't why Houghton Mifflin refused it. Rather, Mandy Oxendine and Tom Lowrey are more independent and resourceful "black" characters than late Victorian America could accept, and Chesnutt's tacit endorsement of several strategies for escaping the oppression African Americans suffered in the postbellum South was even more threatening. Now, those characterizations and attitudes should captivate readers concerned with the history of race relations as well as lovers of African American literature. --Ray Olson
Choice-Rezension
This work by the turn-of-the-century African American writer is published here for the first time. Chesnutt wrote it in the 1890s, when he was an earnest, aspiring author already moderately successful at publishing short stories about the folk traditions of southern plantation slaves. Later, he became known for his "race fiction" collections, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, both appearing in 1899. In subsequent years, he wrote two critically acclaimed novels, The House behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901). This early work is not as well constructed and developed as Chesnutt's later novels, but its story of racial tension and tragedy allows readers to study Chesnutt's early workmanship and to learn how he felt about the important theme of the "tragic mulatto" stereotype. He expresses daring views about the practice of light-skinned blacks passing in the white world. Here, Chesnutt seems more daring in treating racially sensitive issues than he was in his later stories. Of further interest is the fact that Chesnutt partially relied on his own experiences jotted down in his journals (see The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt, ed. by Richard Brodhead, CH, Jun'94). Recommended for general readers and students of American literature. A. Costanzo; formerly, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
Library Journal-Rezension
Left unpublished 100 years ago, Chesnutt's short novel of racial identity and murder has been resurrected by editor Hackenberry (English, Pennsylvania State Univ., Altoona). Mandy Oxendine is a light-skinned African American woman who has chosen to pass for white in order to attain a better life financially and socially. Pursued by a white landowner and the object of a traveling preacher's obsession, Mandy is discovered by her former lover, Lowrey, a light-skinned teacher who has chosen to live as a black man. The landowner's lust and greed soon lead to murder and an attempted lynching. While of historical interest in the study of 19th-century African American literature and of Chesnutt's later works (e.g., The Conjure Woman, 1899) the novel is underdeveloped, with characters that lack depth or passion and an ending that is too neatly resolved. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with strong African American collections.Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.