Kirjahaku

The House Behind the Cedars, which many consider Charles Chesnutt's finest novel, tells of John and Lena Walden, mulatto siblings who pass for white in the postbellum American South. The drama that unfolds as they travel between black and white worlds constitutes a riveting portrait of the shifting and intractable nature of race in American life. This edition revitalizes a much-neglected masterpiece by one of our most important African-American writers. As Werner Sollors writes, "William Dean Howells did not overstate his case when he compared Chesnutt's works with those by Turgenev, Maupassant, and James . . . and Chesnutt] has become one of the most important 'crossover' authors from the African-American tradition."

The Marrow of Tradition and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl -The Best Black Authors Of All TimeCharles ChesnuttHarriet JacobsOde Sade"As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust."― Charles W. Chesnutt"Reader, did you ever hate? I hope not. I never did but once; and I trust I never shall again. Somebody has called it "the atmosphere of hell"; and I believe it is so."- Harriet Ann JacobsThe Marrow of Tradition pp. 4Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl pp. 329

William Wells Brown, Frances E.W. Harper, and Charles W. Chesnutt, three black writers who bore witness to the experience of their people under slavery, create a portrait of black life in the 19th century in these three novels.