02669cam a2200313 4500 1261868777 TxAuBib 010529s2002||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2001038120 9781931082068 alk. paper 1931082065 alk. paper (OCoLC)2341 DLC DLC BAKER WSL NLGGC ABI BTCTA YDXCP TxAuBib Chesnutt, Charles Waddell, 1858-1932. Selections 2002. Stories, novels & essays / Charles W. Chesnutt. Stories, novels, and essays. New York : Library of America, 2002. x, 939 p. ; 21 cm. Library of America ; 131 Library of America series, The ; 131 Includes bibliographical references (p. 929-939.) The conjure woman -- The wife of his youth and other stories of the color line -- The house behind the cedars --The marrow of tradition -- Uncollected stories -- Selected essays. Publisher description: Charles W. Chesnutt broke new ground in American literature with searching explorations of the meaning of race and innovative use of African American speech and folklore. Rejecting genteel Victorian hypocrisy about miscegenation, lynching, and ""passing,"" Chesnutt exposed the deformed logic of Jim Crow with novels and stories of formal clarity-creating, in the process, the modern African American novel. The Conjure Woman (1899) introduced Chesnutt to the public as a writer of ""conjure"" tales, stories that explore black folklore and supernaturalism. That same year, he published The Wife of His Youth, and Other Stories of the Color Line, stories set in Chesnutt's native North Carolina that dramatize the legacies of slavery and Reconstruction at the turn of the century. His first novel, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) tells, as no previous novel ever had, of racial passing. The Marrow of Tradition (1901), Chesnutt's masterpiece, is a powerful and bitter novel about the harsh reassertion of white dominance in a southern town at the end of the Reconstruction era, based largely on the Wilmington race riot. Nine uncollected short stories, including conjure tales omitted from The Conjure Woman, round out a selection of the author's fiction. Eight essays highlight Chesnutt's prescient views on the paradoxes of race relations in America and the definition of race itself. African Americans Fiction. African Americans. Library of America ; 131. The Library of America series ; 131.