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Outstanding, affordably priced volume presents a selection of ten 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," "The Sheriff’s Children," "Baxter’s Procrustes," and "The Doll." Redolent with wit, charm, and insight; essential reading for students of African-American culture. Edited and with an Introduction by Joan Sherman.
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The Stories of Charles Chessnutt
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.

This is a short, inexpensive book which will introduce the reader to an early African-American writer who deserves to be better known. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Was Donald Glover really what he seemed--a handsome, dedicated, and clever African-American star of the Harlem Renaissance, whose looks made him the "quarry" of a variety of women? Or could the secrets of his birth change his destiny entirely? Focusing on the culture of Harlem in the 1920s, Charles Chesnutt's final novel dramatizes the political and aesthetic life of the exciting period we now know as the Harlem Renaissance. Mixing fact and fiction, and real and imagined characters, The Quarry is peopled with so many figures of the time--including Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey--that it constitutes a virtual guide to this inspiring period in American history. Protagonist Glover is a light-skinned man whose adoptive black parents are determined that he become a leader of the black people. Moving from Ohio to Tennessee, from rural Kentucky to Harlem, his story depicts not only his conflicted relationship to his heritage but also the situation of a variety of black people struggling to escape prejudice and to take advantage of new opportunities.

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 oeuvrebut 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). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Hidden Treasure Found
This is one of the three novels that Chesnutt wrote late in his career that were rejected by the publishers. The publishers apparently found THE QUARRY too controversial and in deed it is.The basic story line has beendone before - the Puddin Head Wilson theme that John Twain wrote of where aman is raised as black but is indeed white.Chesnutt varies the theme andwhile telling the story of Donald Glover also tells the story of hypocricyin American life.For those who did not like Chesnutt's early stories thatrelied heavily on dialect and folk tales, I would urge them to try hislater works. I recently read THE COLONEL'S DREAM which is an excellentstudy of the New South.The Quarry is an excellent view of America in theearly part of the 20th Century and perhaps today. ... Read more

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The work of a man who wrote of racial prejudice with a frankness highly unusual for the era in which he lived, this concise, readable survey examines the life of one of the most influential promoters of civil rights. Included are Douglass's early life in slavery, his escape from Maryland to New York, his power and charisma as a public speaker and crusader for the abolitionist cause, his accomplishments as a journalist and leader of his people, the influence he wielded with President Lincoln, and much more. A thoughtful and admiring account of a great man, this book is essential reading for students of African-American history and anyone interested in the history of the civil rights movement. Unabridged republication of a classic, originally published in 1899.
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A concise and well-written biography of the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, written just four years after his death. With a chronology and bibliography. ... Read more

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"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 WhiteCollected 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.Amazon.com Review
Charles Waddell Chesnutt declared his intentions in this 1891entry in journal: "Every time I read a good novel, I want to writeone. It is the dream of my life- -to be an author." Less than a decadelater, he had realized his dream. It was, however, short-lived;Chesnutt published his last novel in 1905, and only a few storiesthereafter.Still, as one of the first blacks to earn his living as awriter before the Harlem Renaissance, he remains an important figurein American literature. This collection of letters, includingcorrespondence with Booker T.Washington and the Southern novelist GeorgeWashington Cable (an early mentor), is essential for anyonecurious about the roots of black writing. ... Read more

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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.

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Books for All Kinds of Readers. ReadHowYouWant offers the widest selection of on-demand, accessible format editions on the market today. Our 7 different sizes of EasyRead are optimized by increasing the font size and spacing between the words and the letters. We partner with leading publishers around the globe. Our goal is to have accessible editions simultaneously released with publishers' new books so that all readers can have access to the books they want to read. To find more books in your format visit www.readhowyouwant.com ... Read more

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Publisher: Boston, New York : Houghton, Mifflin and CompanyPublication date: 1899Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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Charles W. Chesnutt was an early pioneer is writing about African American folklore and racial identity.He wrote about lynchings, segregation and the hypocrisy of American values in post Civil War South. The Wife of his Youth is a collection of nine stories in which Chesnutt tells the African-American's search for identity in the tumultuous period from Reconstruction to the turn of the century. His themes are the tensions of inter and intra racial living.Stories include The wife of his youth, Her Virginia mammy, The sheriff's children, A matter of principle, Ccely's dream, The passing of grandison, Uncle Wellington's wives, The bouquet, and The web of circumstance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great book for fun or a course on Reconstruction
I enjoyed all of the stories in this collection, and shared them with my teenagers.They depict with wit, tenderness and irony identity crises of African Americans during and after Reconstruction, and the racism that persisted in both North and South.They read like a mixture of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe with a touch of Jane Austen.

A STORY OF LOVE, LOYALTY AND SURVIVAL
This story is beautifully written. Mr. Chestnutt carefully presents the two different worlds of light-skinned educated blacks and dark-skinned uneducated blacks.He shows how for both groups the Reconstruction erameant an unclear identity. He also shows how both groups are victims ofcircumstance, but that truth, love, and fidelity can over come thosecircumstances.I liked this book because as an African-American I knowabout the "color" problem among our people.I also liked itbecause it was a true love story and a tear jerker.I suggest you read italoud to a literary group.It's a wonderful story. ... Read more