Short story writers have industriously added to this new regionalism, in such numbers that even mention of their names is impracticable. Wilbur Daniel Steele, however, should be mentioned for his grasp of folklore and types apparent in such stories as “Sooth” and “Conjure.” Other stories of distinction are James Boyd’s “Bloodhound,” Vernon Sherwin’s “Nigger-Lover,” from the many good stories of Negro life published in Story Magazine, and Louis Paul’s “No More Trouble For Jedwick.” The liberal and radical magazines are publishing informed and sincere fiction of Negro life. The Crisis and Opportunity, Negro magazines, have published many good interpretations “from the inside.” Skill and penetration mark such stories as “Symphonesque” by Arthur Huff Fauset, “The Flyer” by Cecil Blue, “Swamp Moccasin” and “Fog” by John F. Matheus, and the work of Henry Jones.
An admittedly inadequate word might be included here on children’s books. In a long line from Little Black Sambo to the newest Ezekiel by Elvira Garner (1937) Negro children have generally been written of in the same terms as their mothers and fathers, as quaint, living jokes, designed to make white children laugh. Against this tradition of comic condescension, Eva Knox Evans, in Araminta (1935) and Jerome Anthony (1936), has written with sincere and informed sympathy. The same qualities are in the children’s stories of Arna Bontemps, one of the most versatile Negro authors, who collaborated with Langston Hughes on Popo and Fifina (1933) a story of Haitian children, and has written You Can’t Pet A Possum (1936) and Sad Faced Boy (1937).
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How does Sherwood Anderson resemble Julia Peterkin and Van Vechten?
2. Account for the growing revolt on the part of southern women against the tradition of “southern charm.”
3. What is regionalism? How does it differ from local color?
4. What states seem to be as yet uncovered by regionalists?
5. Compare the work of the regionalists with the plantation tradition.
6. What authors include pictures of southern injustice?
7. In what respects are The No-Nation Girl, Gulf Stream and Children of Strangers similar?