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Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race.(Book Review)

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From: The Mississippi Quarterly
Date: 20021222
Author:Wonham, Henry B.

by Dean McWilliams. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. xii, 261 pp. $39.95.

AS A SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD SCHOOLTEACHER in rural South Carolina, Charles Chesnutt was bewildered and exasperated by the inscrutable folkways of his pupils. "This is the doggondest country I ever saw to teach in," he confided to his journal: "They are the most suspicious people in the world, good-sized liars, hypocrites, inquisitive little nigger wenches & c. I wouldn't teach here another year for fifty dollars a month." Here, in the space of a six-letter word and the dash that imperfectly ...

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