Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith

A white woman living in segregated Georgia during the first half of the twentieth century, Lillian Smith surprised readers with stories of mixed-race love affairs, mob attacks on “outsiders,” and young female campers exploring their sexuality. Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith considers Smith’s evolution from a young girls’ camp director into a courageous artist engaging difficult topics with frankness and courage. She did not pull punches in her portrayals of the South, yet she devoted herself to the artist’s role as she saw it: to lead readers toward a better understanding of themselves and a more fulfilling existence. Smith’s writings cut to the core of the neurotic behaviors she observed and participated in as a Southerner. To draw readers into her exploration of those behaviors, she invites them into compelling stories, employing literary techniques that foster critical reconsideration of stubbornly dominant ideologies. With words as her medium, she sketches maps of fictionalized Southern places, in the process revealing the markers of wounds and disfunction. Smith offers readers an intimate glimpse into her own childhood as well as the psychological traumas that all Southerners experience and help to perpetuate. Comprised of seven essays by contemporary Smith scholars, Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith explores Smith’s writings in an attempt to yield a clear portrait of this charismatic figure, whose work was crucial in her own time and is profoundly relevant in the twenty-first century, as well.