The World Is Our Home: Society and Culture in Contemporary Southern Writing - Paperback

by Jeffrey J. Folks (Editor), Nancy Summers Folks (Editor)

Since the early 1970s southern fiction has been increasingly attentive to social issues, including the continuing struggles for racial justice and gender equality, the loss of a sense of social community, and the decline of a coherent regional identity. The essays in The World Is Our Home focus on writers who have explicitly addressed social and cultural issues in their fiction and drama, including Dorothy Allison, Horton Foote, Ernest J. Gaines, Jill McCorkle, Walker Percy, Lee Smith, William Styron, Alice Walker, and many others. The contributors provide valuable insights into the transformation of southern culture over the past thirty years and probe the social and cultural divisions that persist. The collection makes an important case for the centrality of social critique in contemporary southern fiction.

Author Biography

Jeffrey J. Folks is professor of literature at Doshisha University in Japan. Nancy Summer Folks is a freelance editor with more than 15 years experience working with Southern literature.