Dirt and desire Book

Along with Michael Kreyling's "Inventing Southern Literature," this is one of the most provocative and original critical studies of Southern Literature to date. It's refreshing to see narrowly-casted myths of the Southern writer--(i.e. Agrarian, Southern Renaissance-affiliated/influenced, white, bourbon-soaked males writing and responding to "intellectual" history(ies) of the South, etc.)--exploded and redefined to include writers who've been historically excluded or misread. As Yaeger argues throughout her book, for too many years, "Southern" has been conflated with "white/male," and has been pitched as a literature that is obsessed primarily with "community." Here is her pivotal response to this limiting notion that attempts to pigeonhole and marginalize "Southernness":

Yeager writes:

"Is Southern literature about family and community? Sometimes. But it is more likely to be about struggle, crisis, cultural emergence, and emergency" (44).

Yes!

This is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in Southern Literature.