Book Description

Customer Reviews (7)

An Astounding American Novel
Charles Chesnutt's 1901 novel, "The Marrow of Tradition," is finally, after nearly a century, getting a broader audience, and deservedly so.Set in late 1890's North Carolina, Chesnutt's novel examines the psychology of turn of the century American race relations.Based on the incidents leading up to the 1898 Wilmington 'race riot,' "The Marrow of Tradition" is an astounding fictional study of American race relations, and their political, social, economic, and personal ramifications, which we still feel to-day.This is a novel which should join Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" as a key text in American literature courses, and in the broader social imaginary.

"The Marrow of Tradition" begins with multiple anxities - Major Carteret, a former Southern Civil War officer, whose family was nearly ruined as a result of the war, is in the process of rebuilding his family and his fortunes.Having founded a newspaper, 'The Morning Chronicle,' his fortunes seem to be on the rise.However, he envisions threats on every side - personally, the precarious life of his new born son constantly threatens to end his family line; politically, since the passage of the 15th Amendment, the black population of his hometown, Wellington, is increasingly subjecting his pride to the 'insult' of an 'inferior' race in positions of authority and influence.For the black population of Wellington, threats to their growing power are just as palpable - Carteret and his cronies (particularly General Belmont and 'Captain' McBane) are building up a 'white supremacy' movement; social relations between blacks and whites have the veneer of restraint, with explosive rage always bristling beneath the surface on both sides of the 'color line.'For black people like Sandy Campbell and Jane Letlow, in service to white families since before the war, investment in 'status quo antebellum' is a way of life.Others like Jerry Letlow and Josh Green represent absolute differences in opinion in their relations with the whites.For mixed-race individuals like Dr. William Miller and his wife Janet, social acceptance, respectability, and mobility seem possible.Miller's decision to build a hospital in Wellington is predicated on the hope that he might be a cornerstone for the up-and-coming black community.

With a complex set of relations like this in place, the novel quickly draws us in.Carteret's determination in setting up a 'white supremacy' movement meets with various successes and failures, as he uses his newspaper to sow seeds of discontent among the white population, which is actually outnumbered in Wellington, two to one.An editorial from a black newspaper, against the extra-judicial practices of lynch mobs enrages Carteret and his group.A key relationship in the novel, between an old Southern aristocrat, John Delamere, his profligate grandson, Tom, and their longtime family servant, Sandy Campbell, sets the stage for heightened racial tensions, when Sandy is accused of murdering an elderly white woman, Polly Ochiltree, who is related to the Carterets.

Chesnutt does a phenomenal job of juxtaposing the systems by which each individual and each group and sub-group in the novel deals with the realities of life in a post-Reconstruction southern town.From simple subsisting to aggressive attempts at change, from local traditions of hexcraft to public manipulation through the press, from defensive postures to mob mentality, from legislation to extra-legal action, from duties to thecommunity to the duties owed to one's own family, Chesnutt presents his readers with a wide variety of strategies open to his characters.With a narrative voice which believes decisively in "Fate," the novel tries to illustrate the legacy of slavery, and the almost inevitable mess that comes about when stationary, progressive, and regressive mindsets clash on a public level.

One of Chesnutt's major achievements is in never wholly giving way to group mentalities or broad generalizations with regard to the actors in this drama.Stereotypes are as soon dismissed as acknowledged.He clearly allows for and presents differences in opinion on the level of the individual - Josh Green's self-proclaimed mission of vengeance against white people is as deeply felt as Jerry Letlow's wishes to become white.Even within the 'white supremacy' Big Three, Careteret, Belmont, and McBane express radically different approaches to gaining what they imagine to be a common goal.White characters like Philadelphia surgeon, Dr. Burns, and Wellington newspaper man, Lee Ellis, are as inclusionary and accepting of black citizens and their aspirations as their respective social positions will allow them to be.There is a lot more going on in "The Marrow of Tradition" than I have pointed to here.Professor Eric Sundquist's introduction does an excellent job of setting up the historical, political, and biographical contexts involved in the novel.Overall, this is an extremely rich novel and very much worth reading.

A compelling, engaging story of characters and events
Masterfully narrated by Michael Collins, the historical novel, The Marrow Of Tradition, by Charles Waddell Chesnutt is set in the 1898 North Carolina city of Wellington, presenting a kind of microcosm of the ante-bellum south where a town has gone mad with racial hatreds, and roiling confrontations between southern "redeemers" and the now free black community. The first African-American novelist to achieve national recognition for his work, Charles Waddell Chesnutt is able to take us back into a time of family tragedy, death, lynch law, and endemic racial violence that would scar the worlds of both whites and blacks for generations to come. The Marrow Of Tradition is a compelling, engaging story of characters and events that grips the listener's total attention from beginning to end. (Running Time: 3:30 hours)

An engaging inquiry into turn-of-the-century race relations
This near-forgotten novel really doesn't get the attention it deserves. Although written over a hundred years ago(Chesnutt has the distinction of being the first African-American professional writer of fiction), the novel anticipates many of the approaches leaders would later employ in their attempts to better the plight of African-Americans. Josh Green, for example, is a dead-ringer for the "by any means necessary" rhetoric of Malcolm X, while Dr. Miller seems more emblematic of the accomodationist position adopted by Booker T. Washington and later modified by Martin Luther King. Although Chesnutt seems to imply preference for the latter, the text never falls into a redundant good/bad binary. Chesnutt skillfully demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of strategies designed to address the systemic disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Like many black writers interested in such issues (most notably Patricia Williams in "The Alchemy of Race and Rights"), the text reinforces the importance of rights discourse and a well-functioning legal forum as the keys to ensuring black freedom and autonomy from coercive hegemonical practices.

Although the text, as some commentators have noted, sometimes wildly veers into melodrama, the power and vision of the narrative trumps whatever small stylistic quibbles I may have with it. A great read.

Tradition and Justice
This Chesnutt novel is one of the most powerful fictional works about the nature of race relations published in the era of the Jim Crow South. It carefully relates issues of the "separate but equal" doctrine,Southern tradition and class distinctions, mob justice and lynching,generational shifts in race relations, and a number of other problems in aninteresting narrative account of the Wilmington race riot. Chesnutt'sstyle, powerful nuances, and memorable characters make this novel anessential read for anyone interested in the history of race relations inAmerica.

A melodramatic yet poignant tale for current times
This novel, originally published in 1901, is based on a historic event from 1898, a racially based incident in which about a dozen African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina, were brutally murdered byCaucasians who'd lost political power, after Reconstruction, andsuccessfully gained that power back by massacring some and completelyintimidating all of the other African Americans in that community.Chesnutt, however, does not simply retell the story of the "raceriot" but uses that event as the basis for a story about the tensionsbetween peoples of different "races" and the disenfranchisementof African Americans at the initiation of Jim Crow Laws. This is aninteresting read, and excellent for the classroom, particularly whenthinking about using fiction as the basis to teach students to do research.There are three editions: two are good and the third should be ignoredcompletely. Buy the 20th Cent. Classics edition (edited by Sundquist) orthe Univ. of Michigan/Ann Arbor Paperback edition (edited by Farnsworth).Do NOT buy the Black Classics/X-Press version; it is a sham. The publishershave changed the title to Tradition and have left out portions of thenovel, sometimes just phrases and other times whole paragraphs. The BlackClassics/X-Press edition is a different read completely and should NOT beordered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fascinating information mulattos in the south
I have an ancestor named Amanda / Mandy Oxendine, born 1823 Jackson Co TN. So I was really interested in reading this account, to learn more about what life as a mulatto was like back then.

In the story set in the mid-1800s, Mandy Oxendine is a fair skinned mulatto. She moves to Sandy Run, a village near Rosinville, North Carolina with her mom after being "abandoned" by her boyfriend for two years. Mandy's hope is to "pass as white" and live amongst the white folk in Rosinville, and maybe even marry a white man. Unfortunately for Mandy, along comes Tom Lowrey, her ex-boyfriend who is also mulatto but who chooses to be known as black. Mandy and Tom had grown up together in a small town in North Carolina about 75 miles from Sandy Run. It turns out Tom went up north for two years to be educated and become worthy of her love.

Tom takes on a job as teacher of the black school in Rosinville, to be near Mandy. He can't talk openly to Mandy because, in this town, whites and blacks do NOT mix. Even the train station had a waiting room for whites only. Still, he finds Mandy and professes his love. Mandy is torn between Tom and her new beau, Robert Utley. But Robert is engaged to another. The love triangle causes all sorts of problems which the book works through to resolve.

It's very interesting (and disturbing) to see just how much the whites looked down on someone for having even a drop of black blood in them. You were either "fully white" or "not white / bad". In one exchange, Mandy is walking with a female friend. The friend spies Tom and says, "Oh Mandy, who you reckon that is? It's the nigger teacher down at Sandy Run. He looks like a white man, dno't he, Mandy?" Mandy replies, "Niggers is niggers and looks don't make 'em white." The girl promptly responds, "My mammy won't let me speak to no niggers."

What's even more interesting about this exchange is that the girls are speaking poorly, while Tom is very well educated and speaks very well. His skin is very fair. But because he has some black ancestors somewhere in his past, he's "bad" and not worthy of speaking to.

It's very hard to read through the "black speech" spoken by the negros in the book, which you would assume to be a true and accurate representation of how they talked back then. For example, one passage reads, "I reckon you's a bawn fool, Primus McAdoo, dat's w'at I does, comin' 'roun' yere, 'sturbin' a 'oman w'en she's gittin' her braekfas'. Mars' Bob'll be yellin' heah d'reckly, and 'is brekfus' won' be ready, an' yo'll be fer ter blame." It really makes you wish for an audio book version, so you can just hear the speech, without having to try to decipher the text and imitate it.

Still, a great book for understanding the life of mulattos of the south!

A Hidden Treasure
By reading the introduction to this book, you will find that although Mandy Oxendine was Chesnutt's first novel it was not published until 1997.Being somewhat of a student of Chesnutt, I enjoyed this book a great deal.But I can also understand why publishers in the 1890's would turn it down. In the tradition of the times, there are twists and turns in the plot.Thebook is very short and is very easy to read. I would recommend it! ... Read more

Amazon.com
Charles Chestnutt's 1921 novel begins with a startling premise: expatriate Paul Marchand, a "Free Man of Color," returns to New Orleans only to discover that he is now officially white. Thanks to a will, he has become the head of a rich, powerful--and racist-- Creole family. To claim his birthright, however, he must renounce his mixed-race wife and children, as well as all the principles of his upbringing. Novelist Chestnutt was the most popular and critically acclaimed African-American writer of his day. By the time he wrote Paul Marchand, F.M.C., however, he had fallen from favor, and publishers universally rejected the novel. Its publication marks a recent resurgence of interest in his writing, and it's clear to see why; if Chestnutt's purple prose and melodramatic plot twists sometimes seem dated, his ideas do not. With its dramatic schism between nature and nurture, Marchand's dilemma poses some peculiarly modern questions about the meaning of race. Like many current theorists, Chestnutt saw race as a social construct rather than as an irreversible biological fact, perhaps because of his own background. He was himself light-skinned enough to pass for white, and knowing that he decided not to do so gives this fascinating novel added resonance.Book Description

Evoking the atmosphere of early-nineteenth-century New Orleans and the deadly aftermath of the San Domingo slave revolution, this historical novel begins as its protagonist puzzles over the seemingly prophetic dream of an aged black praline seller in the famous Place d'Armes. Paul Marchand, a free man of color living in New Orleans in the 1820s, is despised by white society for being a quadroon, yet he is a proud, wealthy, well-educated man. In this city where great wealth and great poverty exist side by side, the richest Creole in town lies dying. The family of the aged Pierre Beaurepas eagerly, indeed greedily, awaits disposition of his wealth. As the bombshell of Beaurepas's will explodes, an old woman's dream takes on new meaning, and Marchand is drawn ever more closely into contact with a violently racist family. Bringing to life the entwined racial cultures of New Orleans society, Charles Chesnutt not only writes an exciting tale of adventure and mystery but also makes a provocative comment on the nature of racial identity, self-worth, and family loyalty.

Although he was the first African-American writer of fiction to gain acceptance by America's white literary establishment, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) has been eclipsed in popularity by other writers who later rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. Recently, this pathbreaking American writer has been receiving an increasing amount of attention. Two of his novels, Paul Marchand, F.M.C. (completed in 1921) and The Quarry (completed in 1928), were considered too incendiary to be published during Chesnutt's lifetime. Their publication now provides us not only the opportunity to read these two books previously missing from Chesnutt's oeuvre but also the chance to appreciate better the intellectual progress of this literary pioneer. Chesnutt was the author of many other works, including The Conjure Woman & Other Conjure Tales, The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow Tradition, and Mandy Oxendine. Princeton University Press recently published To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905 (edited by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Robert C. Leitz, III).

Customer Reviews (1)

A lost treasure
This is not my first Chesnutt book.Over the years I read the Marrow of Tradition, House Behind the Cedars and several of Chesnutt's short stories.PAUL MARCHAND FMS is truly a lost treasure. The introduction is extremelywell done and gives an excellent explanation to new readers of this genre. All readers will get a true sense of the racial lines that exsisted inearly 19th century New Orleans and how some of these same feelings existtoday.If you have not been a reader of Chesnutt, this is a good place tostart. I'm sure that you will come to love his writings just as I have.Asa native of Cleveland, Ohio, I'm proud to remind all readers that Chesnutt spent most of his live in Cleveland and is buried in Cleveland's historicLakeview Cemetery. ... Read more

Book Description
The stories in The Conjure Woman were Charles W. Chesnutt's first great literary success, and since their initial publication in 1899 they have come to be seen as some of the most remarkable works of African American literature from the Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance. Lesser known, though, is that the The Conjure Woman, as first published by Houghton Mifflin, was not wholly Chesnutt's creation but a work shaped and selected by his editors. This edition reassembles for the first time all of Chesnutt's work in the conjure tale genre, the entire imaginative feat of which the published Conjure Woman forms a part. It allows the reader to see how the original volume was created, how an African American author negotiated with the tastes of the dominant literary culture of the late nineteenth century, and how that culture both promoted and delimited his work.
In the tradition of Uncle Remus, the conjure tale listens in on a poor black southerner, speaking strong dialect, as he recounts a local incident to a transplanted northerner for the northerner's enlightenment and edification. But in Chesnutt's hands the tradition is transformed. No longer a reactionary flight of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the stories in this book celebrate and at the same time question the folk culture they so pungently portray, and ultimately convey the pleasures and anxieties of a world in transition. Written in the late nineteenth century, a time of enormous growth and change for a country only recently reunited in peace, these stories act as the uneasy meeting ground for the culture of northern capitalism, professionalism, and Christianity and the underdeveloped southern economy, a kind of colonial Third World whose power is manifest in life charms, magic spells, and ha'nts, all embodied by the ruling figure of the conjure woman.
Humorous, heart-breaking, lyrical, and wise, these stories make clear why the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt has continued to captivate audiences for a century.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fantastically charming
I bought the entire Library of America a few years ago, and have regularly been sampling and greatly enjoying most of the fiction authors in the series (as well as some of the non-fiction writers) ever since.

But I was stymied the first time I tried to read The Conjure Woman.Most of the book is slavery-era folk tales or fantasies, presented as absolute fact in heavy Negro dialect by an elderly black servant who new white landholders "inherit" when they come South from Ohio and buy an old grape plantation in North Carolina.There is always a backdrop to the stories that relates to the white plantation owners (a transplant from Ohio and his somewhat sickly wife); the man who owns the estate is the first person narrator throughout.

The first time around, I just didn't have the patience to slog through the dialect and try to figure out what old Julius, the servant was saying.But since I had also been initially stopped by other writers in the series, then loved them once I gave them a devoted effort, I finally decided to give Chesnutt and Julius a second try.And boy am I glad I did!!

In a way, it reminded me of one of my other favorite works from the series, The Pastures of Heaven, by John Steinbeck.Like this book, it is about an abandoned farm that acquires a new owner, and both books are a connected set of weird short stories that are great individually but also have cumulative effect taken together, and have a fascinating and spooky larger story to tell.

While Steinbeck's book is more sinister, Chesnutt's has more charm, as one consistent thread throughout is the suggestion that old Julius always has an immediate reason for telling (inventing?) each strange and scary tale that he tells.Sometimes, it is strictly to advance Julius' own interests -- while on other occasions it is based on influencing events affecting his white employers and their loved ones in a way that is very helpful to all.

In the end, old Julius seems to be a kind of beneficent manipulative genius with his fantastic and persuasive tales.I am very stingy with my stars and have only ever given but a few 5's, but I can say that this is at least a 4+.The book is so perfect in achieving its intention, and Chesnutt is such a genius himself, I'm surprised I never heard of him before!!

And, after getting used to the slave-Negro dialect, I grew to much enjoy reading it (most of the book is in this dialect, as the plantation owner records Julius' stories as he told them).It is so colorful, expressive, and humorous.

Uncle Remus turned upside down!
In some ways, this could be seen as the flipside to the Uncle Remus stories(which celebrated many aspects of plantation life). Chesnutt, the first African-American known to write a large number of shiort stories, tells the tales of Uncle Julius McAdoo, who tells his white employers tales of slavery with harrowing underpinnings about seperation of families and other hardships, usually in an ironic style. Considering that these stories were written in the 1890s when sentiental tales of plantation lifewere popular, this is a significant piece of work-buy it.

A must for anyone interested in African American Literature
What is most interesting about these stories is both the narrative framework & the way the narrator of the stories about the black community (there are essentially two narrators) uses magic ("The Goophered Grapevine" and "Po' Sandy" especially) to usurp the authority of the white landowner (the primary narrator, who is re-telling the stories Julius has told him).Maybe it takes an understanding of African American literary traditions-- signifying, call & response, etc, to really dig in, but you can still relate without that background.

There are multiple layers of narration going on-- and once you can get through those layers, you can both enjoy the story-line and understand something pivotal about the way the African American genre works.The dialect and speech patterns are represented in a way that was criticized by some early African American writers who wanted a more "realistic" "naturalistic" and political structure.But underneath the "quaint" nature of the stories about magic & the slave/master relationship are some very subtle and very powerful images of how the slave and master influence *each other*-- that there are differences in the power dynamic than what we expect.It might be hard to get into the language-- but once you do, it's not overdone.Read the dialect the way you would learn another language; it's English, with a twist.There is also a great story on "passing," and some exploration of voodoo.This is a text that should be taught alongside Faulkner & Flannery O'Connor-- another look at the South.

a collection of African American folk tales
The stories in this collection range from the mediocre to excellent.Most of the stories feature an Uncle Remus like character named Julius McAdoo telling anecdotes about plantation life to a white couple from the North.Julius talks in dialect which makes the text difficult to understand at times.Additionally, in terms of plot and structure, many of the stories seem repetative.My favorite story in the collection is located in the previously unpublished stories section.I can't remember the name but I think it has the word "tree" in the title. ... Read more

Book Description
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), critically acclaimed for his novels, short stories, and essays, was one of the most ambitious and influential African American writers of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today recognized as a major innovator of American fiction, Chesnutt is an important contributor to de-romanticizing trends in post-Civil War Southern literature, and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who wrote about race in American life.

Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt is the first study to focus exclusively on Chesnutt's novels. Examining the three published in Chesnutt's lifetime—The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream—as well as his posthumously published novels, this study explores the dilemma of a black writer who wrote primarily for a white audience.

Throughout, Matthew Wilson argues that Chesnutt's writings on race and whiteness were influenced by the perceived demands of his readers. This book analyzes the ways in which Chesnutt crafted narratives for his white readership and focuses on how he attempted to infiltrate and manipulate the feelings and convictions of that audience.

Wilson pays close attention to the genres in which Chesnutt was working and also to the social and historical context of the novels. In articulating the development of Chesnutt's career, Wilson shows how Chesnutt's views on race evolved. By the end of his career, he felt that racial differences were not genetically inherent, but social constructions based on our background and upbringing.Finally, the book closely examines Chesnutt's unpublished manuscripts that did not deal with race. Even in these works, in which African Americans are only minor characters, Wilson finds Chesnutt engaged with the conundrum of race, and reveals him as one of America's most significant writers on the subject. ... Read more

Book Description
Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932) was the first African American writer of fiction to win the attention and approval of America's literary establishment. Looking anew at Chesnutt's public and private writings, his fiction and nonfiction, and his well-known and recently rediscovered works, Dean McWilliams explores Chesnutt's distinctive contribution to American culture: how his stories and novels challenge our dominant cultural narratives--particularly their underlying assumptions about race. The published canon of Chesnutt's work has doubled in the last decade: three novels completed but unpublished in Chesnutt's life have appeared, as have scholarly editions of Chesnutt's journals, his letters, and his essays. This book is the first to offer chapter-length analyses of each of Chesnutt's six novels. It also devotes three chapters to his short fiction. Previous critics have read Chesnutt's nonfiction as biographical background for his fiction. McWilliams is the first to analyze these nonfiction texts as complex verbal artifacts embodying many of the same tensions and ambiguities found in Chesnutt's stories and novels. The book includes separate chapters on Chesnutt's journal and on his important essay "The Future American." Moreover, Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race approaches Chesnutt's writings from the perspective of recent literary theory. To a greater extent than any previous study of Chesnutt, it explores the way his texts interrogate and deconstruct the language and the intellectual constructs we use to organize reality. The full effect of this new study is to show us how much more of a twentieth-century writer Chesnutt is than has been previously acknowledged. This accomplishment can only hasten his reemergence as one of our most important observers of race in American culture. ... Read more

Book Description