Southern Women

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how both Lemon "Lemon Swamp and Other Places" by Karen Fields and "The Making of a Southerner" by Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin are personal histories of Southern women. It examines how both books encapsulate lived, autobiographical accounts of Southern life. It evaluates how both books look on a world from the outside in, in Lumpkin's case a white Southerner gazing at African-American life, in Karen Field's case, that of a contemporary African-American looking at African-American life of her grandmother's past.

From the Paper:

"Lemon Swamp also gives an alternative vision of the South as often depicted in popular fiction. However, Lemon Swamp is not a tale of the white South at all. Lumpkin's story is a tale of the South of African-Americans in some respects, but from a white perspective. In contrast, Lemon Swamp tells the story from the point of view of an African-American woman born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1888. Lemon Swamp is not in an explicit ideological conversation with a romantic ideology. It is more intent upon simply shedding light on both the everyday aspects of Field's life and the ways in which her community worked together to counteract segregation and poverty. However, in its own way, the book can be seen as a challenge to Lumpkin's perspective."

More papers on Southern Women:

• Book Review # 97627 : "Southern Women in Literature"
• Analytical Essay # 55282 : "The Civil War and Southern Women"
• Essay # 27895 : "Southern Women and the American Civil War"

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