Books published by University Press of Mississippi

Born into slavery on a Louisiana plantation, John Roy Lynch (1847-1939) came to adulthood during the Reconstruction Era and lived a public-spirited life for over three decades. His autobiography, Reminiscences of an Active Life, reflects Lynch's thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the past and of his own experience.

Creoles of Color are rightfully among the first families of southwestern Louisiana. Yet in both antebellum and postbellum periods they remained a people considered apart from the rest of the population. This probing book is the first to scrutinize this multiracial group through a close study of primary resource materials.

Collects some fifty interviews, many of which are little known in the United States because they appeared in non-English European periodicals and newspapers. This collection reveals a serious, often didactic Wright, giving voice to his inarticulate brothers and sisters as he reveals his racially representative colonialism.

The first-ever collection of interviews with this well-known, prolific writer whose books include twenty-two volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published over a period of thirty-six years. In addition to standard literary forms, he has written sporting essays, reviews, literary journalism, food columns, and almost twenty screenplays.

Documents the projects one New Deal agency erected in one southern state and places these in social and political context. Based on extensive research in the National Archives and substantial field work within the state, Robert D. Leighninger has gathered the story of the establishment of the PWA and the feverish building activity that ensued.

How artists maintained integrity in the Red Scare's atmosphere of conformity

Reevaluates Charles Chesnutt's deft manipulation of the "passing" theme to expand understanding of the author's fiction and nonfiction. Nine contributors apply a variety of theories to add richness to readings of Chesnutt's works. Together the essays provide convincing evidence that "passing" is an intricate, essential part of Chesnutt's writing, and that it appears in all the genres he wielded.

Critically examines the participation of Mexican comic books in the continuing debate over the character and consequences of globalization in Mexico. The focus of the book is on graphic narratives produced by and for Mexicans in the period following the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

This edition of Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics makes available in English a groundbreaking work on comics by one of the medium's foremost scholars. In this book, originally published in France in 1999, Groensteen explains clearly the subtle, complex workings of the medium and its unique way of combining visual, verbal, spatial, and chronological expressions.

A collection of papers from the 2000 Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History. Instead of providing historiographical summary, the participants were invited to formulate thoughts arising from their own special interests and experiences.

How a mountain community and music harmonize in an old-time fiddle player from West Virginia

Jesse James, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde - James Copeland (born 1823) was the granddaddy of them all. This is his notorious history as recorded by the sheriff who arrested him in 1857. Dr Pitts's startling narrative of Copeland's notorious life and heyday in crime was first published in 1858.

Maps changing landscapes of criminal flight in American texts by focusing on the twenty years between 1932 and 1952, the period when the codes of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI first prevailed. It was the time that policing was modernized and reconfigured, a time when law enforcement fought to redeem itself from corruption and compromise.

Reflecting developments in Faulkner criticism, these papers delivered at the 1980 Faulkner and Yoknapatawtha Conference point the way to a new and relatively unexplored avenue of research - the study of relationships among Faulkner's seemingly distinct novels.

Offers a full-length study of the literary phenomenon in which the modern American South, heartland of evangelical Protestantism, has produced significant Roman Catholic writers. This study focuses on Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, and Walker Percy, converts to Roman Catholicism, and explores their efforts to achieve perception and articulation, together with the art resulting from their struggles.

Asia Booth Clarke's memoir is an indispensable resource for perceiving the complexities of her ill-fated brother. Indeed, as has been said, she "turns on the light in the Booth family living room". Certainly no outsider could give such insights into the turbulent Booth's childhood or share such unique personal knowledge of the gifted actor.

Brings together roughly half of Kael's published interviews along with a lively debate between Kael and Jean-Luc Godard. The interviews provide rewarding perspectives on Kael's aesthetics, her politics, and her perceptions about what it is she does as a critic. They also contain discussions of films that Kael did not have the chance to review.

Sheds light on the paradoxical part the South played in the process of drafting and adopting the Bill of Rights. In cogent, six noted experts in legal, constitutional, and southern history fill a gap in the literature of southern legal history for the period 1787-1791.

For nearly thirty years and through the tenure of five editors-in-chief, Nash K. Burger was on the editorial staff of the New York Times Book Review. In this engaging reminiscence, he explores the route that took him to that bastion of the book world. Burger is a natural raconteur whose ease with the word enhances this appealing narrative.

A new look at the evolution of this frontier society and its unyielding grip on slavery

Women should be seen and not heard." That was a well-known maxim in nineteenth century America. In her new book, Unruly Tongue Martha Cutter says the ten African American and Anglo American women she studied wrote as inside agitators. Over time they created a new theory of language.

In the history of Richard Wright, perhaps more than with other writers, a knowledge of what he actually read, and of what authors he preferred, is essential in explaining his intellectual development. This bibliography of his library and reading serves as a key to understanding the development, philosophies, and aesthetics of this great writer.

Mixes Sigmund Freud with vampires and The Little Mermaid to see what new light psychoanalysis can bring to folklore techniques and forms. Bloody Mary in the Mirror is an expedition into psychoanalytic folklore techniques and constitutes a giant step towards realizing the potential Freud's work promises for folklore studies.

The first two-hundred years of Western civilization in the Americas was a time when fundamental and sometimes catastrophic changes occurred in Native American communities in the South. In this volume, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists provide perspectives on how this era shaped American Indian society for later generations and how it even affects these communities today.