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Article: In Black and White: The Reader's Part in Chesnutt's "Gray Wolf's Ha'nt".(19th century African American writer Charles Chesnutt)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly)
- Article date:
- June 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 University of Rhode Island. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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All cats are gray in the dark ... nothing is easier than for a white man to black his face. God alone knows how many crimes have been done in this guise!
--Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition
In late nineteenth-century America, widespread social strife--industrial and political corruption, labor wars, urban and sectional discord, racial conflict--greatly increased the demand for literary forms that would enable readers to imagine better times and places. Meeting this need, "local-color" realists, or regionalists, depicted a simpler, more meaningful life in the provinces, and romancers a more significant one in exotic eras and locales. Out of this ...