Books like Southern Local Color by Barbara C. Ewell

Southern Local Color presents thirty‑one short stories set between the 1870s and early 1900s that capture the conflict, exoticism, sensuality, and eccentricity of the American South. Edited with comprehensive introductions, each narrative is prefaced by detailed author information, bibliographies, and scholarly notes. The collection highlights prominent figures—Kate Chopin, Charles Chesnutt, Joel Chandler Harris—and features overlooked writers like suffragist Sarah Barnwell Elliott and African‑American poets Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar‑Nelson. By spanning locales from New Orleans to Virginia’s Tidewater and the Appalachian imagination, the anthology explores themes of war, segregation, immigration, depression, and suffrage, offering insight into post‑Civil War America’s struggle to reconcile diverse cultures within a unified national identity.

First publish date: 2002