Chesnutt, Charles Waddell

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A lost treasure

Paul Marchand, F.M.C
Charles Waddell Chesnutt , and Dean McWilliams
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691059942

Amazon.com

Charles Chestnutt's 1921 novel begins with a startling premise: expatriate Paul Marchand, a "Free Man of Color," returns to New Orleans only to discover that he is now officially white. Thanks to a will, he has become the head of a rich, powerful--and racist-- Creole family. To claim his birthright, however, he must renounce his mixed-race wife and children, as well as all the principles of his upbringing. Novelist Chestnutt was the most popular and critically acclaimed African-American writer of his day. By the time he wrote Paul Marchand, F.M.C., however, he had fallen from favor, and publishers universally rejected the novel. Its publication marks a recent resurgence of interest in his writing, and it's clear to see why; if Chestnutt's purple prose and melodramatic plot twists sometimes seem dated, his ideas do not. With its dramatic schism between nature and nurture, Marchand's dilemma poses some peculiarly modern questions about the meaning of race. Like many current theorists, Chestnutt saw race as a social construct rather than as an irreversible biological fact, perhaps because of his own background. He was himself light-skinned enough to pass for white, and knowing that he decided not to do so gives this fascinating novel added resonance.

Book Description

Evoking the atmosphere of early-nineteenth-century New Orleans and the deadly aftermath of the San Domingo slave revolution, this historical novel begins as its protagonist puzzles over the seemingly prophetic dream of an aged black praline seller in the famous Place d'Armes. Paul Marchand, a free man of color living in New Orleans in the 1820s, is despised by white society for being a quadroon, yet he is a proud, wealthy, well-educated man. In this city where great wealth and great poverty exist side by side, the richest Creole in town lies dying. The family of the aged Pierre Beaurepas eagerly, indeed greedily, awaits disposition of his wealth. As the bombshell of Beaurepas's will explodes, an old woman's dream takes on new meaning, and Marchand is drawn ever more closely into contact with a violently racist family. Bringing to life the entwined racial cultures of New Orleans society, Charles Chesnutt not only writes an exciting tale of adventure and mystery but also makes a provocative comment on the nature of racial identity, self-worth, and family loyalty.</p>

Although he was the first African-American writer of fiction to gain acceptance by America's white literary establishment, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) has been eclipsed in popularity by other writers who later rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. Recently, this pathbreaking American writer has been receiving an increasing amount of attention. Two of his novels, Paul Marchand, F.M.C. (completed in 1921) and The Quarry (completed in 1928), were considered too incendiary to be published during Chesnutt's lifetime. Their publication now provides us not only the opportunity to read these two books previously missing from Chesnutt's oeuvre but also the chance to appreciate better the intellectual progress of this literary pioneer. Chesnutt was the author of many other works, including The Conjure Woman & Other Conjure Tales, The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow Tradition, and Mandy Oxendine. Princeton University Press recently published To Be an Author: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905 (edited by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Robert C. Leitz, III).</p>

Customer Reviews:

A lost treasure.......1999-01-18

This is not my first Chesnutt book. Over the years I read the Marrow of Tradition, House Behind the Cedars and several of Chesnutt's short stories. PAUL MARCHAND FMS is truly a lost treasure. The introduction is extremely well done and gives an excellent explanation to new readers of this genre. All readers will get a true sense of the racial lines that exsisted in early 19th century New Orleans and how some of these same feelings exist today. If you have not been a reader of Chesnutt, this is a good place to start. I'm sure that you will come to love his writings just as I have. As a native of Cleveland, Ohio, I'm proud to remind all readers that Chesnutt spent most of his live in Cleveland and is buried in Cleveland's historic Lakeview Cemetery.

Selected Writings (New Riverside Editions)

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Selected Writings (New Riverside Editions)
Charles Waddell Chesnutt , and Paul Lauter
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (American Century Series)

ASIN: 0618107339

Book Description

This unique collection portrays the early twentieth century short story writer, biographer, novelist, essayist, stenographer, and lawyer, Charles Waddell Chesnutt. As demonstrated through his writings, historical commentary, and criticism, readers are shown how Chesnutt was, perhaps, the best African American literary signifier of his day. The volume opens with generous selections from his journals and published and unpublished essays, which document the writer's racial, literary, social, and economic milieu. The volume also includes the conjure stories, novel excerpts, selected literary criticism, photos, and a list of related web sites for further research.</p>

The Marrow of Tradition (Black Classics)
Average customer rating:

An Astounding American Novel

A compelling, engaging story of characters and events

An engaging inquiry into turn-of-the-century race relations

Tradition and Justice

A melodramatic yet poignant tale for current times

The Marrow of Tradition (Black Classics)
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
Manufacturer: X Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Hazard of New Fortunes (Modern Library Classics)

ASIN: 1874509123

Book Description

Elected black and white fusion party office holders run the fictional City of Wellington in this classic American novel set in the South at the end of Reconstruction in 1898. Bent upon restoring the traditional social order, a cabal of white racists engineer a race riot to drive the fusionists from office and restrict the "nigger" vote. Using the Wilmington, N.C. race riot of 1898 and the events leading up to it as his model, Chesnutt artfully explores the tangled skeins of motives propelling all his characters. Interesting and complex subplots abound, peopled by colorful characters of both races subjected to unmanageable colliding emotions that are energized by race, love, greed, shame, and unquenchable thirsts for power.

Customer Reviews:

An Astounding American Novel.......2003-02-04

Charles Chesnutt's 1901 novel, "The Marrow of Tradition," is finally, after nearly a century, getting a broader audience, and deservedly so. Set in late 1890's North Carolina, Chesnutt's novel examines the psychology of turn of the century American race relations. Based on the incidents leading up to the 1898 Wilmington 'race riot,' "The Marrow of Tradition" is an astounding fictional study of American race relations, and their political, social, economic, and personal ramifications, which we still feel to-day. This is a novel which should join Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" as a key text in American literature courses, and in the broader social imaginary.

"The Marrow of Tradition" begins with multiple anxities - Major Carteret, a former Southern Civil War officer, whose family was nearly ruined as a result of the war, is in the process of rebuilding his family and his fortunes. Having founded a newspaper, 'The Morning Chronicle,' his fortunes seem to be on the rise. However, he envisions threats on every side - personally, the precarious life of his new born son constantly threatens to end his family line; politically, since the passage of the 15th Amendment, the black population of his hometown, Wellington, is increasingly subjecting his pride to the 'insult' of an 'inferior' race in positions of authority and influence. For the black population of Wellington, threats to their growing power are just as palpable - Carteret and his cronies (particularly General Belmont and 'Captain' McBane) are building up a 'white supremacy' movement; social relations between blacks and whites have the veneer of restraint, with explosive rage always bristling beneath the surface on both sides of the 'color line.' For black people like Sandy Campbell and Jane Letlow, in service to white families since before the war, investment in 'status quo antebellum' is a way of life. Others like Jerry Letlow and Josh Green represent absolute differences in opinion in their relations with the whites. For mixed-race individuals like Dr. William Miller and his wife Janet, social acceptance, respectability, and mobility seem possible. Miller's decision to build a hospital in Wellington is predicated on the hope that he might be a cornerstone for the up-and-coming black community.

With a complex set of relations like this in place, the novel quickly draws us in. Carteret's determination in setting up a 'white supremacy' movement meets with various successes and failures, as he uses his newspaper to sow seeds of discontent among the white population, which is actually outnumbered in Wellington, two to one. An editorial from a black newspaper, against the extra-judicial practices of lynch mobs enrages Carteret and his group. A key relationship in the novel, between an old Southern aristocrat, John Delamere, his profligate grandson, Tom, and their longtime family servant, Sandy Campbell, sets the stage for heightened racial tensions, when Sandy is accused of murdering an elderly white woman, Polly Ochiltree, who is related to the Carterets.

Chesnutt does a phenomenal job of juxtaposing the systems by which each individual and each group and sub-group in the novel deals with the realities of life in a post-Reconstruction southern town. From simple subsisting to aggressive attempts at change, from local traditions of hexcraft to public manipulation through the press, from defensive postures to mob mentality, from legislation to extra-legal action, from duties to the community to the duties owed to one's own family, Chesnutt presents his readers with a wide variety of strategies open to his characters. With a narrative voice which believes decisively in "Fate," the novel tries to illustrate the legacy of slavery, and the almost inevitable mess that comes about when stationary, progressive, and regressive mindsets clash on a public level.

One of Chesnutt's major achievements is in never wholly giving way to group mentalities or broad generalizations with regard to the actors in this drama. Stereotypes are as soon dismissed as acknowledged. He clearly allows for and presents differences in opinion on the level of the individual - Josh Green's self-proclaimed mission of vengeance against white people is as deeply felt as Jerry Letlow's wishes to become white. Even within the 'white supremacy' Big Three, Careteret, Belmont, and McBane express radically different approaches to gaining what they imagine to be a common goal. White characters like Philadelphia surgeon, Dr. Burns, and Wellington newspaper man, Lee Ellis, are as inclusionary and accepting of black citizens and their aspirations as their respective social positions will allow them to be. There is a lot more going on in "The Marrow of Tradition" than I have pointed to here. Professor Eric Sundquist's introduction does an excellent job of setting up the historical, political, and biographical contexts involved in the novel. Overall, this is an extremely rich novel and very much worth reading.

A compelling, engaging story of characters and events.......2002-05-10

Masterfully narrated by Michael Collins, the historical novel, The Marrow Of Tradition, by Charles Waddell Chesnutt is set in the 1898 North Carolina city of Wellington, presenting a kind of microcosm of the ante-bellum south where a town has gone mad with racial hatreds, and roiling confrontations between southern "redeemers" and the now free black community. The first African-American novelist to achieve national recognition for his work, Charles Waddell Chesnutt is able to take us back into a time of family tragedy, death, lynch law, and endemic racial violence that would scar the worlds of both whites and blacks for generations to come. The Marrow Of Tradition is a compelling, engaging story of characters and events that grips the listener's total attention from beginning to end. (Running Time: 3:30 hours)

An engaging inquiry into turn-of-the-century race relations.......2002-02-09

This near-forgotten novel really doesn't get the attention it deserves. Although written over a hundred years ago(Chesnutt has the distinction of being the first African-American professional writer of fiction), the novel anticipates many of the approaches leaders would later employ in their attempts to better the plight of African-Americans. Josh Green, for example, is a dead-ringer for the "by any means necessary" rhetoric of Malcolm X, while Dr. Miller seems more emblematic of the accomodationist position adopted by Booker T. Washington and later modified by Martin Luther King. Although Chesnutt seems to imply preference for the latter, the text never falls into a redundant good/bad binary. Chesnutt skillfully demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of strategies designed to address the systemic disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Like many black writers interested in such issues (most notably Patricia Williams in "The Alchemy of Race and Rights"), the text reinforces the importance of rights discourse and a well-functioning legal forum as the keys to ensuring black freedom and autonomy from coercive hegemonical practices.

Although the text, as some commentators have noted, sometimes wildly veers into melodrama, the power and vision of the narrative trumps whatever small stylistic quibbles I may have with it. A great read.

Tradition and Justice.......2000-02-10

This Chesnutt novel is one of the most powerful fictional works about the nature of race relations published in the era of the Jim Crow South. It carefully relates issues of the "separate but equal" doctrine, Southern tradition and class distinctions, mob justice and lynching, generational shifts in race relations, and a number of other problems in an interesting narrative account of the Wilmington race riot. Chesnutt's style, powerful nuances, and memorable characters make this novel an essential read for anyone interested in the history of race relations in America.

A melodramatic yet poignant tale for current times.......1999-08-13

This novel, originally published in 1901, is based on a historic event from 1898, a racially based incident in which about a dozen African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina, were brutally murdered by Caucasians who'd lost political power, after Reconstruction, and successfully gained that power back by massacring some and completely intimidating all of the other African Americans in that community. Chesnutt, however, does not simply retell the story of the "race riot" but uses that event as the basis for a story about the tensions between peoples of different "races" and the disenfranchisement of African Americans at the initiation of Jim Crow Laws. This is an interesting read, and excellent for the classroom, particularly when thinking about using fiction as the basis to teach students to do research. There are three editions: two are good and the third should be ignored completely. Buy the 20th Cent. Classics edition (edited by Sundquist) or the Univ. of Michigan/Ann Arbor Paperback edition (edited by Farnsworth). Do NOT buy the Black Classics/X-Press version; it is a sham. The publishers have changed the title to Tradition and have left out portions of the novel, sometimes just phrases and other times whole paragraphs. The Black Classics/X-Press edition is a different read completely and should NOT be ordered.

The House Behind the Cedars (Brown Thrasher Books)

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Worth reading for historical insight
Incredibly engaging
Important writer, but never quite reaches mastery

The House Behind the Cedars (Brown Thrasher Books)
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 082032194X

Customer Reviews:

Worth reading for historical insight.......2005-08-30

If published today, I would have given this book 3 stars because of the amount of contrivance it contains. But considering that it was first published in 1900, it must be given higher esteem. Historically, the study it provides of being biracial (considered Black then) and able to pass as white in the Carolinas 100 years ago is invaluable to the African American literary canon. The dilemmas faced by this ability are brilliantly portrayed in this book. I was fascinated with the dilemmas whites and "dark-skinned" blacks faced socially when dealing with the Rena and her brother. I especially enjoyed the conversation between her brother John and the town lawyer when John asks him to teach him to become a lawyer - I thought that was the most brilliantly written passage in the book.

Despite the contrivances and that it takes a bit to get into the writer's style, this was a compelling read. Though not especially likeable, the characters are interesting, complex and well-drawn.

I recommend this to anyone interested in the racial history of the South after abolition.

Incredibly engaging.......2005-02-17

I had to read this book for a Senior Seminar in English and was surprised to find that it was an entertaining read. Granted, one must suspend disbelief in a few places in order to allow for coincidences but what Chesnutt does is something of a pastiche of different writing genres. He also goes to the very limits in portraying the many gradations that existed in the Southern color line.
In truth, most of the characters are not necessarily likeable, but one cannot help turning the pages to see who will do what next. Those who chanced to pass for white were never far from an intrigue of some kind.
This is a fast read as well as an entertaining one, and while Chesnutt plays with many different styles and humors, it is not without historical merit.

Important writer, but never quite reaches mastery.......1999-12-17

I am writing a final paper on this book at the moment. Chestnutt is an important writer, but not one of the best of the period. I don't think he ever got the chance to fully mature as a writer. This book leaves me with a lot of what-ifs and whys. For example, he introduces a nephew to the heroine who appears as though he will be important, but simply drops out of the picture. The book leaves me wondering what he meant to do, and didn't have time for. It is a good read, but rather frustrating.

Book Description

Features 10 of the best stories by a pioneer in the development of African-American fiction: "The Goophered Grapevine," "Po' Sandy," "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny," "The Wife of His Youth," "Dave's Neckliss," "The Passing of Grandison," "A Matter of Principle," more. Witty, charming, and insightful. Edited and with an Introduction by Joan Sherman.

Customer Reviews:

The Stories of Charles Chessnutt.......2002-08-15

Charles Chestnutt (1858-1932)was a pioneering African-American short story writer, novelist and essayist. He wrote about the life of blacks during the reconstruction era and during slavery. He also wrote about turn-of-the century relationships between black people and white people and about the emerging black urban middle-class and its relationship to both poor rural black people and to educated white people.

Chestnutt wrote two volumes of stories, "The Conjure Woman" (1899) and "The Wife of his Youth and other Stories of the Color Line" (1899). This short, inexpensive book from the Dover Thrift series includes stories from each volume together with a useful introduction to Chestnutt by Joan Sherman.

There are five "Conjure Woman" stories in the brief volume. These stories take place in North Carolina just after the Civil War and they relate back to events and characters in the pre-Civil War period. The stories are told in a heavy dialect which takes some getting used to. The characters are a white Northern couple, John and Annie, who have moved to North Carolina, an aging black storyteller and former slave named Uncle Julius, and a "conjure woman" named Aunt Peggy. At critical moments during their stay in North Carolina, Uncle Julius tells John and Annie stories about the conjure woman which illuminate life in the slave South and which have a way of returning back to John and Annie as well. The stories are fun, creative, and outrageous.

The second group of five stories explore white black relationships subsequent to the Civil War as well as relationships between different types of black people. There are three stories which deal with highly educated black people and the ambivalence they feel towards the rural blacks in the post-Reconstruction south. These stories also show the difficulties faced by urban black people in the North at the turn-of-the century in gaining acceptance from their neighboors. (Chestnutt had first-hand experience of this situation.) There is also a story centering upon a lynching in a Sourthern town.

Amazon.com

Charles Waddell Chesnutt declared his intentions in this 1891 entry in journal: "Every time I read a good novel, I want to write one. It is the dream of my life- -to be an author." Less than a decade later, he had realized his dream. It was, however, short-lived; Chesnutt published his last novel in 1905, and only a few stories thereafter. Still, as one of the first blacks to earn his living as a writer before the Harlem Renaissance, he remains an important figure in American literature. This collection of letters, including correspondence with Booker T. Washington and the Southern novelist George Washington Cable (an early mentor), is essential for anyone curious about the roots of black writing.

Book Description

"This book will appeal to a growing audience, not just of Chesnutt scholars but of all those interested in the interracial history of American letters and the development of the African-American literary field." George Hutchinson, author of The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White Collected in this volume are the 1889-1905 letters of one of the first African-American literary artists to cross the "color line" into the de facto segregated American publishing industry of the turn of the century. Selected for inclusion are those chronicling the rise of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), an attorney and businessman in Cleveland, Ohio, who achieved prominence as a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and lecturer despite the obstacles faced by a man of color during the "Jim Crow" period. In his insightful commentaries on his own situation, Chesnutt provides as well a special perspective on life-at- large in America during the Gilded Age, the "gay `90s" (which were not so gay for African Americans), and the Progressive era. Like his black correspondents Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, T. Thomas Fortune, and William M. Trotter he was one of the major commentators on what was then termed the "Negro Problem." His most distinguished novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901), were published by major "white" presses of the time; not only did his editors and publishers but then- preeminent black and white critics greet these literary protests against racism as proof of the intellectual and artistic excellence of which a long-oppressed people were capable when afforded equal opportunity. Since the 1960s, when the rediscovery of his genius began in earnest, Chesnutt has received even more recognition than he enjoyed by the early 1900s. Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Robert C. Leitz, III, have surveyed every collection of Chesnutt's papers and those of his correspondents in order to reconstruct the story of his most vital years as an author. Their introduction contextualizes the letters in light of Chesnutt biography and the less-than-promising prospects faced by a would-be literary artist of his racial background. Their encyclopedic annotations explaining contemporary events to which Chesnutt responds and what was then transpiring in both black and white cultural environments illuminate not only Chesnutt's character but those of many now unfamiliar figures who also contributed to what Chesnutt termed the "cause." Provided in this first- ever edition of Chesnutt's letters is a detailed portrait of one of the pioneers in the African-American literary tradition and a panorama of American life a century ago.

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To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required

The Colonel's Dream
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Ramona
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

ASIN: 141915706X

Book Description

But did not choose the design; let us be thankful for that. It might have been like his father's. Bill Fetters rich and great," he mused, "who would have dreamed it? I kicked him once, all the way down Main Street from the schoolhouse to the bank--and dodged his angry mother for a whole month afterward!

Download Description

But did not choose the design; let us be thankful for that. It might have been like his father's. Bill Fetters rich and great, he mused, "who would have dreamed it? I kicked him once, all the way down Main Street from the schoolhouse to the bank--and dodged his angry mother for a whole month afterward!"

Customer Reviews:

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required.......2005-01-31

THE COLONEL'S DREAM resurrects a time when our nation was recovering from one of the bloodiest wars in history and struggling to regain its identity as a unified country. Colonel French, although a former Confederate, has become enlightened and feels obligated to share his reformed view of American society with his old friends and neighbors. Aided by his devoted servant and freed slave, Uncle Peter, the Colonel makes a life for himself and his young son in the town of Clarendon and works toward making it a prosperous place to live for both blacks and whites. Unfortunately, everyone is not on his side and the powers-that-be are only interested in maintaining the status quo. It is the Colonel's valiant efforts to lay the foundation for a progressive community that moves the action in this novel and provides the reader with a certain sense of ethos, humanity, and encouragement to see this novel to its final conclusion.

Reviewed by Kim Anderson Ray
of The RAWSISTAZÂ™ Reviewers

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The house behind the cedars
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
Manufacturer: Gregg Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006BVHUA

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The Marrow Of Tradition
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
Manufacturer: IndyPublish.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1414293690

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