Crossing the Color Line: Readings in Black and White - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570033765 ISBN 13: 9781570033766

Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 2000

Synopsis

The complex truth about the color line-its destructive effects, painful legacy, clandestine crossings, possible erasure-is revealed more often in private than in public and has sometimes been visited more easily by novelists than historians. In this tradition, Crossing the Color Line, a powerful collection of nineteen contemporary stories, speaks the unspoken, explores the hidden, and voices both fear and hope about relationships between blacks and whites.

About this title

From Booklist:

Despite current emphasis on multiethnicity, tension between black and whites, the legacy of American slavery, continues to preoccupy American culture. This compilation offers insights into racial relationships in short stories that examine racial differences and commonalities and attempt to reshape perceptions of race. The book is in three sections: "Misreadings," whose contents highlight misunderstandings arising from unequal social status as well as race; "Rereadings," consisting of stories of situations that promote racial understanding; and "New Readings," made up of stories that are cautiously optimistic about the future of race relations. The authors represented include Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, John A. Williams, Elizabeth Spencer, and David Means, and story premises include a white woman's ruminations about her maid, the "dark and intimate Southern knowledge" between blacks and whites, and a black Hollywood writer's strong and cynical reaction to seeing his mother, as maid to a wealthy white family, caring for her spoiled, white charge. An interesting overview of how fiction has chronicled what has changed and what has remained the same in American race relations. Vanessa Bush
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Review:

". . . a fascinating collection . . . . Jones succeeds in providing a vehicle for both races to alter perceptions of one another." -- Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2001

"a must-read if you want to understand race in America...clear proof of fiction's mysterious capacity to elucidate reality, and to heal, avenge, transcend." -- Josephine Humphreys, author of Nowhere Else on Earth

About this edition

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1570033765
• ISBN 13: 9781570033766
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Jones Suzanne W.