"Though he was the first African-American writer of fiction to win major acclaim, recent history has largely ignored the writings of Charles Chesnutt. This collection of essays seeks to confirm and reevaluate the stature of this great American novelist"--Provided by publisher.
Charles W. Chesnutt, Jack Thorne and the African American literary response to the 1898 Wilmington race riot / Linda Belau and Ed Cameron -- "The fruit of my own imagination": Charles W. Chesnutt's The marrow of tradition in the age of realism / Willie J. Harrell, Jr. -- "I shall leave the realm of fiction": conjure, genre, and passing in the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt / Christopher Bundrick -- "Those folks downstairs believe in ghosts": the eradication of folklore in the novels of Charles W. Chesnutt / Wiley Cash -- The fiction of race: folklore to classical literature / Maria Orban -- Charles W. Chesnutt's The house behind the cedars: an outlaw(ed) reading / Coleman C. Myron -- Reading the transgressive body: phenomenology in the stories of Charles W. Chesnutt / Kim Kirkpatrick -- "Your people will never rise in the world": Chesnutt's message to a black readership / Tyrie J. Smith -- Vanished past and vanishing point: Charles W. Chesnutt's short stories and the problem of American historical memory / Zoe Trodd -- All green with epic potential: Chesnutt goes to the marrow of tradition to re-construct America's epic body / Gregory E. Rutledge -- "The wife of his youth": a trickster tale -- Cynthia Wachtell -- With myriad subtleties: recognizing an Africanist presence in Charles W. Chesnutt's The conjure woman / Tiel Lundy -- Passing for what?: the marrow of tradition's minstrel critique of the unlawfulness of law / Julie Iromuanya -- Geographies of freedom: race, mobility, and uplift in Charles W. Chesnutt's Northern writing / Michelle Taylor -- Motherhood, martyrdom and cultural dichotomy in Charles W. Chesnutt's The house behind the cedars / B. Omega Moore -- Epilogue: the gifts of ambiguity / Michelle Taylor.