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StoryLines Southeast

In October 1999, StoryLines America launched its second phase, this time featuring two series of radio programs in California and the Southeast. This phase was supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), with additional support from Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Program 1 Barbara Duncan, ed., Living Stories of the Cherokee The first major collection of Cherokee tales published in nearly 100 years, Living Stories of the Cherokee is an eloquent and elegant patchwork of history, myth and song, in the tradition of the great historic epics from the Bhagavadgita and Gilgamesh to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Dante’s Inferno. Barbara Duncan—folklorist, scholar, and songwriter—is one of the most influential documenters of folk life in southern Appalachia working today. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 2 William Gilmore Simms, Tales of the South, edited & introduced by Mary Ann Wimsatt This is a representative sampling of the short fiction of William Gilmore Simms, a nineteenth-century American writer whose popularity once surpassed that of his contemporaries, Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. His novels were widely acclaimed during his lifetime; his short stories are less well-known but now regarded by an expanding circle of critics as his best work. These sprightly, highly imaginative tales offer intimate views of nineteenth-century work and domesticity while exploring the legends, superstitions and folk experiences of all classes and races of antebellum society. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 3 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave First published in 1845, this dramatic autobiography is one of the most eloquent indictments of slavery ever recorded. Douglass’s shocking narrative takes the reader into the world of the South’s antebellum plantations, revealing the daily terror he suffered as a slave, and how he developed the powerful principles that led him to triumph over the circumstances of his birth, secure his freedom, and become the first great African-American leader in the United States. In addition, his account sheds invaluable light on a pivotal period in American history. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 4 Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family A compelling, unblinking exploration, by a white man, of the history and legacy of slavery in his own family and the Black families with whom his is inextricably intertwined. This exhaustively researched, highly acclaimed account reveals the riches and squalor, violence and insurrection, pride and shame of the history and legacy of slavery in the United States. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 5 Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel First published in 1929, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a restless young man who longs to escape his tumultuous family and stifling small town. Set in Altamont, North Carolina, it evokes a time and place with extraordinary lyricism and precision, and has become one of the great classics of twentieth-century American literature. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 6 Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain This highly acclaimed debut novel is the story of two parallel journeys. The first is that of Inman, a wounded Confederate veteran who walks hundreds of miles to his home and his love, Ada, in the remote hills of North Carolina. Along the way he meets all kinds of rogues and scoundrels, Good Samaritans and other helpers. The second is the internal odyssey of Ada, raised in the rarified air of Charleston society and learning to cope in the backwoods after her father’s death. Beautifully written and deeply satisfying, Cold Mountain won the National Book Award for fiction in 1997. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 7 Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find And Other Stories With a keen eye for the dark side of human nature, an amazing ear for dialogue, and a subtle sense of irony, this collection exposes the underside of life in the rural South. Sexual and racial attitudes, poverty and riches, adolescence, old age, and being thirty-four, “which wasn’t any age at all,” are only some of the issues touched upon in this classic collection. Flannery O’Connor won the National Book Award in 1972. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 8 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God This novel, arguably one of the century’s finest, is the story of a Black woman’s quest for identity in 1930s America. It has been highly praised as “the prototypical Black novel of affirmation” (Black World) and as “in the same category with [the work of] William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway of enduring American literature” (Saturday Review). discussion guide (PDF)

Program 9 Josephine Humphreys, Rich in Love Written in deceptively simple and direct language, this is a story of Lucille Odom, who is seventeen years old and trying to hold her family together after her mother’s abrupt departure. As she moves beyond her own needs, she begins to understand love in its many forms: parental, filial, fraternal, sexual, and self. Rich in Love is a moving story of growing up, with all its pain and glory, and a portrait of a family becoming individuals in order to remain a family. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 10 Alice Walker, The Color Purple The novel that established Alice Walker as a major voice in America letters, this is the story of Celie, a victim of incest and marital violence, and how she gains self-respect and strength. Her struggle is revealed through her thirty-year correspondence with her sister, Nettie, a missionary in Africa. The Color Purple was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and The American Book Award, and was hailed by The New York Times Book Review for its “intense emotional impact,” and by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a work to stand beside literature of any time and place.” discussion guide (PDF)

Program 11 Clyde Edgerton, The Floatplane Notebooks This is the story of the Copeland family of Listre, North Carolina, whose head, Albert, writes down everyone’s stories in the notebooks he originally bought to log the glorious flights of his homemade floatplane, which never did fly. A highly acclaimed contemporary writer, Edgerton here alternates accounts of the Vietnam War with wildly funny sequences of sexual exploration, combining a gift for comedy with piercing insights into family ties. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 12 Reynolds Price, Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides This memoir recalls Price’s childhood spent in the North Carolina countryside, the same landscape that has served as the setting for most of his many beloved novels. Here he shares powerful stories of the friends and family who helped shape him into the man and writer he is today. He captures the spirit of a community recovering from the Depression, living through World War II, and facing the economic and social changes of the 1950s. discussion guide (PDF)

Program 13 Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies Set in turn-of-the-century, southern Appalachia, this is the story of Ivy Rowe, told entirely through her letters. Touching, poignant, and at times humorous, her letters reflect the struggles and poverty mixed with her own irrepressible spirit that mark her life in the backwoods. The Los Angeles Times called it “A tour de force,” and the Chicago Tribune said, “Few readers will be dry-eyed as they watch this extraordinary woman disappear around that last bend in the road.” discussion guide (PDF)

 

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