"Closer to the truth than any fact" : memoir, memory, and Jim Crow / Jennifer Jensen Wallach.

Wallach (Georgia College and State Univ.) provides a fascinating look at literary memoirs that deal with US racism against African Americans. She rightly notes that historians have been loathe to accept memoirs as historical documents, since the genre is by nature subjective. However, she persuasive...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wallach, Jennifer Jensen, 1974-
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Athens : University of Georgia Press, ©2008.
Series:Book collections on Project MUSE.
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Online Access:Click for online access
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Summary:Wallach (Georgia College and State Univ.) provides a fascinating look at literary memoirs that deal with US racism against African Americans. She rightly notes that historians have been loathe to accept memoirs as historical documents, since the genre is by nature subjective. However, she persuasively demonstrates that memoirs (as representative of "emotive inquiry") are indeed valuable primary documents, when analyzed properly. Wallach examines both black memoirists (Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates Jr.) and white memoirists (Willie Morris, Lillian Smith, and William Alexander Percy), investigating each independently and comparatively. The insights from her explications are remarkable, derived particularly through her use of theoretical and historiographical material. By maintaining that literary (as opposed to nonliterary) memoirs provide the deepest historical understanding expressly because literary critics can apply their disciplinary tools to mine the material, Wallach will undoubtedly provoke a lively debate over the comparable utility of other kinds of memoirs, such as popular, vernacular, or ethnographic. Likewise contentious may be her focus on southern rather than broadly US racism. J.B. Wolford University of Missouri--St. Louis distributed by Syndetics.
Physical Description:1 online resource (x, 176 pages)
Format:Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-169) and index.
ISBN:9780820337029
0820337021
1282552910
9781282552913
9786612552915
6612552913
Language:English.
Reproduction Note:Electronic reproduction.
Source of Description, Etc. Note:Print version record.
Action Note:digitized