The New South--replete With Shopping Malls, Hub Airports, Educated African Americans, And Immigrants From Vietnam, Cambodia, And Haiti--is Still Haunted By The Gothic Ghosts Of Its Past. Does The Collision Between Past And Present Account For The Continued Preeminence Of Southern Writers In America's Literary Culture? Bobbie Ann Mason, Ernest Gaines, Rita Mae Brown, Robert Olen Butler, Cormac Mccarthy, Dorothy Allison, And Allan Gurganus Are Just A Few Of The Writers Who Draw On A New Kind Of Southern Background While Reaching Out To A Broad American Readership. Yet Many Of These Writers Have Been Accused Of Catering To The Stereotypes They Think A National Audience Requires. It Would Seem That Questions Of Southern Identity Continue To Be Bound Up With Rage Against Attacks On Southern Culture. Jefferson Humphries And John Lowe Have Assembled A Remarkable Team Of Scholars And Writers To Examine Aspects Of The Contemporary Literature Of The South. From Pulitzer Prize-winning Writer Fred Hobson To Esteemed Scholar James Olney To Poets Kate Daniels And Brenda Marie Osbey, The Contributors Try To Define Southern Culture Today And Ask Who Will Be Writing Southern Literature Tomorrow. Addressing Topics Such As Humor, The Past, Black Autobiography, Ethnicity, And Female Oral Traditions, The Essays Form A Volume That Is Of Interest To Readers Of Southern Literature And History, Creative Writers, And Scholars And Students Of Southern Culture. Southern Writing And The Problem Of The Father / James Applewhite -- Still Southern After All These Years / Jack Butler -- Writing On The Cusp: Double Alterity And Minority Discourse In Appalachia / Rodger Cunningham -- Shape Of Appalachian Literature To Come: An Interview With Wil Hickson / Fred Chappell -- Porch-sitting And Southern Poetry / Kate Daniels -- Of Canons And Cultural Wars: Southern Literature And Literary Scholarship After Midcentury / Fred Hobson -- And Ladies Of The Club / Jim Wayne Miller -- Interview With Brenda Marie Osbey / John Lowe -- Discourse Of Southernness: Or How We Can Know There Will Be Such A Thing As The South And Southern Literary Culture In The Twenty-first Century / Jefferson Humphries -- Autobiographical Traditions Black And White / James Olney -- Speculations On A Southern Snipe / Dave Smith -- Robert Olen Butler: A Pulitzer Profile / Michael Sartisky -- Rhetoric Of Southern Humor / Stephen A. Smith. Edited By Jefferson Humphries & John Lowe. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.

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