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Provides a critical introduction to Louisiana literature and focuses on how Louisiana literature and culture converge with and depart from the rest of the South.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Writing Louisiana: A New Generation Tells Their Stories
Louisiana Narrative and Folk Traditions
Living on the Edge in Rebecca Well's Little Altars Everywhere by Mary Ann Wilson
Food and Foodways in Michael Lee West's She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana by Lisa Abney
Toole's Louisiana Voice in The Neon Bible by Patricia A. Threatt
The Kingfish as Author: Huey Long's Two Political Autobiographies by Philip Dubuisson Castille
Locating Community in Contemporary Southern Fiction: Analyzing Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Erin E. Campbell Cash
The Spell of the Swampland: The Gulf Coast Fictions of Shirley Ann Grau by Sally Blanton
Outside of Time: Dave Robicheaux and the Criminal Kind of Postmodern Louisiana by Thomas Easterling
From Huey Long to Willie Stark: Louisiana Politics in All the King's Men by Harold Woodell
Paganism, Papism, Protestantism, and the New Southern Religion
Postmodernism Goes South: John Dufresne's Louisiana Power and Light by David J. Caudle
Fiction is My Religion: Conversations with John Dufresne by Kevin Blaine Bell and David J. Caudle
Invoking Generational Demons: Orality and Catholicism in The Witching Hour by Kenneth Price and Shelby Posrak
The Complicated Catholicism of Andre Dubus by Michael Cocchiarale
Lady of the Earth and Moon: Goddess Imagery and the Ya Yas by Lori Rowlett
Black Cat Bone and Snake Wisdom: New Orleans Hoodoo, Haitian Voodoo, and Rereading Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God by Pamela Glenn Menke
Three Castes of Race and Gender
Awakening the Essence of Blue: The Emerging Southern Women of Kate Chopin and Moira Crone by Suzanne Disheroon Green
Equality for African American (Wo)Men: Quests for Masculinity in Ernest Gaines's Bloodline by Laurie Champion
Against Regulations: Southern Women in the Fiction of Rebecca Wells by Patricia M. Grant
Ellen Gilchrist's Heroines, the Scourge of New Orleans by Mary McCay
Rape and Redemption: The Revision of Colored Female Chastity in Pauline Hopkin's Contending Forces and Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints by Amy Anastasia Birge
Bloodlines: Representations of Black and White Creoles in the Fiction of Ernest Gaines by Keith Byerman

About the Author

SUZANNE DISHEROON GREEN is Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Her previous books include Kate Chopin: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Works (Greenwood, 1999). She has published numerous articles on Kate Chopin and other Southern writers.

LISA ABNEY is Director of the Louisiana Folklife Center and Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern State University. Her essays have appeared in such journals as American Folklore Society News, Louisiana English Journal, and CEA Critic.

Reviews

"In Songs of the New South: Writing Contemporary Louisiana, [the authors] take the exploration of Louisianan language and culture beyond its written manifestation. As an anthology of literary criticism, Songs of the New South takes a holistic approach to literary anaylsis; the editors and contributing writers filter Louisiana's contemporary literature through critical, historical, and anthropological lenses. The result is a novel and insightful appraisal of Louisiana's contemporary literature, a valuable new resource for research as well as personal enrichment. Songs of the New South tackles Louisiana culture on multiple levels, from the realm of the political to the realm of the supernatural; fresh criticism of canon staples like Ernest Gaines, Zora Neale Hurston, and Kate Chopin is placed alongside scholarly analyses of romance/horror novelist Anne Rice. It is a fascinating read."-Elizabeth Brown-Guillory Professor of English Associate Dean University of Houston

"Songs of the New South: Writing Contemporary Louisiana, edited by Suzanne Disheroon Green and Lisa Abney, is a comprehensive and highly reasonable collection of critical articles about well known and not so well known Louisiana writers....Green and Abney's collection is valuable for several reasons. It shows the breadth of literature by Louisiana writers; it presents good scholarship by both junior and senior scholars in the field; and, perhaps, most important, it kindles a desire to enjoy some old favorites and to learn more about lesser known but also excellent Louisiana writers."-Anne E. Rowe Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Florida State University

"Suzanne Disheroon Green and Lisa Abney create a literary Preservation Hall with a collection that gives repeated testimony to Louisiana's unique appeal to Crane and many other contemporary authors, as varied a group as Ernest Gaines and Anne Rice. Neither the authors nor the 20 essayists who discuss their work are mired in mossy swamps of the past, however; instead, they explore Louisiana's oral narrative tradition, its atypical religious heritage, and its drama of race and gender in modern--even postmodern--contexts. Songs of the New South rings with the music of Louisiana voices and the blues-to-zydeco moments of Louisiana lives."-Joan Hall Wylie Instructor in English University of Mississippi

.,."for students exploring relationships between literature and regional culture, beginning undergraduates and above."-Choice

?...for students exploring relationships between literature and regional culture, beginning undergraduates and above.?-Choice

..."for students exploring relationships between literature and regional culture, beginning undergraduates and above."-Choice