The Literature of the American South

Classic and Contemporary

This Norton anthology represents major authors in the tradition — Poe, Douglass, Clemens, Ransom, Toomer, Faulkner, Penn Warren, Hellman, Welty, Williams, Jarrell, McCullers, Dickey, and O’Connor. In addition, the current, thriving state of southern literature is presented in the anthology’s largest section, "The Contemporary South: 1940—Present," with works by Dorothy Allison, Lee Smith, Yusef Komunyakaa, Randall Kenan, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., among many others.

Diversity

The Literature of the American South opens up the concept of "southern literature" across lines of color, gender, and class, embracing both urban and agrarian cultures and bringing into the classroom the ongoing dialogues and debates over crucial questions such as southern identity, racial justice, the image of southern womanhood, and the role of art in society.

Vernacular Traditions

"Vernacular Traditions," Section Four of the anthology, prints a range of texts that makes clear the powerful presence and literary influence of singing, preaching, and storytelling — forms of expression among the most long-lived, adaptable, and vital of the vernacular traditions of the American South.

The Audio Companion

Underlining the presence and continuing importance of the sound as well as the sense of southern vernacular expression, each copy of The Literature of the American South includes an Audio Companion of hard-to-gather recordings by Huddie Ledbetter, Nancy Dixon, Ma Rainey, Booker "Bukka" White, Aunt Molly Jackson, Mahalia Jackson, John Joines, Martin Luther King Jr., and Zora Neale Hurston, among other memorable performers. William L. Andrews’s liner notes introduce the selections and provide source information.

Edited for Students

Like other Norton anthologies, The Literature of the American South provides lively, informative period introductions, author headnotes, annotations that are explanatory not interpretive, and selected bibliographies.