In this searching study, Nghana Lewis offers a close reading of the works and private correspondences, essays, and lectures of five southern white women writers: Julia Peterkin, Gwen Bristow, Caroline Gordon, Willa Cather, and Lillian Smith. At the core of this work is a sophisticated reexamination of the myth of southern white womanhood.
Lewis overturns the conventional argument that white women were passive and pedestal-bound. Instead, she argues that these figures were complicit in the day-to-day dynamics of power and authorship and stood to gain much from these arrangements at the expense of others.
At the same time that her examination of southern mythology explodes received wisdom, it is also a journey of self-discovery. As Lewis writes in her preface, 鈥淎s a proud daughter of the South, I have always been acutely aware of the region鈥檚 rich cultural heritage, folks, and foodstuffs. How could I not be? I was born and reared in Lafayette, Louisiana, where an infant鈥檚 first words are not 鈥榙a-da鈥 and 鈥榤a-ma鈥 but 鈥榗rawfish boil鈥 and 鈥榝ais-do-do.鈥 . . . I have also always been keenly familiar with its volatile history.鈥 Where these conflicting images鈥攁nd specifically the role of white southern women as catalysts, vindicators, abettors, and antagonists鈥攎eet forms the crux of this study. As such, this study of the South by a daughter of the South offers a distinctive perspective that illuminates the texts in novel and provocative ways.
鈥淣ghana Lewis鈥檚 redirected spotlight on White Southern Womanhood鈥檚 productive uses for modernity shines beyond the literary, inspiring us to scrutinize how Plantation Mythology and the Southern Lady鈥檚 card shape the work of not only female authors 1920鈥1945 but also contemporary figures ranging from Queen Latifah and Oprah Winfrey to Elizabeth Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchison and even Laura Bush.鈥濃擝onnie James Shaker, author, Coloring Locals
鈥淭his scathingly honest critique provides brilliant readings that take into account every nuance and every change in the position of white women in relation to supposed white male hegemony and to African American agency. . . . Bringing attention to texts that are rarely taught, Lewis reveals thematic issues and formal subtleties that contribute a very different literary canon from that found in most college syllabi.鈥濃擱ebecca Mark, director, H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute, Tulane University
