Reconstructing Womanhood by Hazel Carby

In this work, Hazel Carby challenges the dominant narratives of African-American cultural history and its pattern of black women writers in order to include urban confrontations in fiction. Carby starts by laying the groundwork and acknowledging the black, feminist scholars and critics who have preceded her. Then she re-examines antebellum racial and gender relationships, especially questioning the ideal of womanhood. She reads both Northern and Southern antebellum texts, including Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl before moving on to such authors as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Iola Leroy), Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, and Pauline Hopkins. Utimately Carby identifies a renaissance in African American literature during the turn of the twentieth century, and complicates the tradition of African American fiction to consider its previously neglected engagement with the struggles of the urban working class. I thought this book was very neatly assembled, and its readings of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (the part I was looking to read, and the one I am most qualified to assess) were quite sharp.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I could not put this book down. Ms. Shaffer and Ms. Barrows have written an epistolary novel, and handled the form so well, that this book really shows the best of what such a novel can be. Furthermore, the characters are memorable, and, for the most part, loveable. They meet loss and oppression with grace, generosity, kindness, and a willingness to love and trust. They also love books and reading (which makes me love them all the more). Finally, although this book deals with tragic circumstances, it ends up affirming the power of the human spirit, and the value of kindness and love. I am so pleased to have read such an uplifting and wonderful book.

The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey by Edith Hall

I was disappointed by this book. In attempting to give a cohesive cultural history of the Odyssey, Edith Hall makes two missteps. First, she gives in to the temptation to read everything that matches some element of the Odyssey as consciously indebted to that work (although not as badly as she could have), and second, she has chosen a topic that is entirely too broad. She would be better advised to find some way to limit her topic and write a more specific book. All that is to say, I find her readings interesting, and they make sense, but they ultimately do not work for me.

Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere by Anna Brickhouse

In this book, Anna Brickhouse re-reads 19th-century American literature as being in significant dialogue with the rest of the hemisphere, even as politically, the US remains in a disengaged and antagonistic stance towards its neighbors. Brickhouse does an excellent job recuperating several texts and authors (including an American poet), and makes some intelligent guesses at identifying an anonymous author. I appreciated both the book's scope and its methodology. I was particularly intrigued by the chapter that sets The Last of the Mohicans against the anonymous Jicoténcal, and I am impressed by her incorporation of French and Spanish sources.

Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans by Shannon Lee Dawdy

In this book, Shannon Lee Dawdy describes the French colonial experience in New Orleans in the context of what she calls rogue colonialism: colonials working primarily in their own interests to create a society and economy which the sponsoring powers do not intend to create. This theory seems to come out of what I take to be the major scholarly innovation of the book: a more full account of the large extent to which smuggling shaped New Orleans during these years, and smuggling's influence on the New Orleanians' rebellion against the Spanish governor who seemed likely to crack down on smuggling. Dawdy starts by surveying the written records that describe New Orleans during this period; she contends their use of "disordered" as a description of the city constitutions a tacit invitation to smugglers. She also spends time talking about the design of the city and the class and racial make-up of its inhabitants. Dawdy has arranged her book very well; each chapter is focused and well-researched (I'm particularly impressed by the range of sources she musters), but they all contribute convincingly to her overall argument.

Pictures from Another Time by Kara Walker et al.

This book contains excellent (insofar as is possible) reproductions of Kara Walker's life-sized installations of silhouettes, and several essays and an interview with Walker contextualizing the artwork. This work is both incredibly skilled and incredibly disturbing. Walker turns convention and remembered history on their sides in order to demonstrate some of the horrors in the American sub-conscious. I think the artwork is important, and that the essays open several avenues of interpretation toward piecing together a tentative understanding of this art.

Other Souths: Diversity and Difference in the US South, Reconstruction to Present, edited by Pippa Holloway

I enjoyed this collection of historical essays about the South. As the subtitle implies, each essay addresses some aspect of history in the US South from about 1877 to the present, and each essay shows the South as a place of diversity and difference rather than as a monolithic bloc, but at times the collection still felt incredibly disparate. I think that the essays on the origins of folk legend John Henry (which reclaims the experience of man beating machine in a larger sense), the desegregation of Atlanta, and the increase of the Hispanic population in the South may be particularly useful to me going forward. Also among the best were an essay about peddlers and traveling salesmen and an essay about the conviction of four white men who raped a black woman. I enjoyed an article on the Auburn football program in the 1920s.

I think the historical analysis in this book was for the most part quite good. I would have liked to have seen more theory applied, but overall, I am happy I read this collection, and I plan to return to some of the essays in the future, as I teach and write about the South.