This is a story of a sober kind, picturing life in a little town of Missouri, half a century ago. The principal incidents relate to a slave of mixed blood and her almost pure white son, whom she substitutes for her master's baby. The slave by birth grows up in wealth and luxury, but turns out a peculiarly mean scoundrel, and perpetrating a crime, meets with due justice. The science of fingerprints is practically illustrated in detecting the fraud. The title character is the village atheist, whose maxims doubtless express much of the author's own disillusion.

With contributions by Ted Atkinson, Robert Bray, Patsy J. Daniels, David A. Davis, Taylor Hagood, Lisa Hinrichsen, Suzanne Marrs, Greg O'Brien, Ted Ownby, Ed Piacentino, Claude Pruitt, Thomas J. Richardson, Donald M. Shaffer, Theresa M. Towner, Terrence T. Tucker, Daniel Cross Turner, Lorie Watkins, and Ellen Weinauer Mississippi is a study in contradictions. One of the richest states when the Civil War began, it emerged as possibly the poorest and remains so today. Geographically diverse, the state encompasses ten distinct landform regions. As people traverse these, they discover varying accents and divergent outlooks. They find pockets of inexhaustible wealth within widespread, grinding poverty. Yet the most illiterate, disadvantaged state has produced arguably the nation's richest literary legacy. Why Mississippi? What does it mean to write in a state of such extremes? To write of racial and economic relations so contradictory and fraught as to defy any logic? Willie Morris often quoted William Faulkner as saying, "To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." What Faulkner (or more likely Morris) posits is that Mississippi is not separate from the world. The country's fascination with Mississippi persists because the place embodies the very conflicts that plague the nation. This volume examines indigenous literature, Southwest humor, slave narratives, and the literature of the Civil War. Essays on modern and contemporary writers and the state's changing role in southern studies look at more recent literary trends, while essays on key individual authors offer more information on luminaries including Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, and Margaret Walker. Finally, essays on autobiography, poetry, drama, and history span the creative breadth of Mississippi's literature. Written by literary scholars closely connected to the state, the volume offers a history suitable for all readers interested in learning more about Mississippi's great literary tradition.

"An illustrated history of the Mississippi River in Mark Twain's life and works. Includes sketches from early editions of Twain's classics, and full-color paintings, postcards, photographs, and maps"--

Writing from the Center is about one very fine writer's quest for a meaningful and moral life. The center he seeks and describes is geographical, emotional, artistic, and spiritual - and it is rooted in place. The geography is midwestern, the impulses are universal. Where and how do we find meaning? Where does a writer find inspiration? How can personal, artistic, family, and community needs be blended to create a harmonious life? What aids exist in such a ""located"" life against despair? How should a writer relate to and represent his place? Twelve interrelated essays probe these questions from different perspectives. ""Buckeye"" examines the resonance of objects and the mysteries of relationships and death. ""Imagining the Midwest"" surveys how other writers have seen and related to their region. ""The Common Life"" makes an eloquent case for community values. ""Sanctuary"" is an eloquent and painful consideration of environmental degradation. ""Writing from the Center"" and ""Letter to a Reader"" deal with Sanders's decisions to locate in the Midwest, to know his place, and to write about it in both fiction and nonfiction.

Black Life in Mississippi is a collection of essays which explore the underexposed life and culture of black Mississippians between the 1860's and the 1980's.

Acclaimed by many as one of the most gifted essayists and stylists in American letters these last few decades, Richard Rodriguez has left an indelible imprint on the tradition of autobiographical writing of the nation. Rodeño’s study of the four installments of Rodriguez’s self-writing offers an insightful and perspicacious analysis of the evolution and the most controversial elements in this Chicano writer’s production so far. Delving deeply into issues of racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious background, various types of hybridity, and different forms of socio-cultural adaptation, this book presents all kinds of incisive observations about the contested space(s) that “minority” self-writers are often pushed to occupy in the American tradition of the genre.