A bestseller in 1933, and subsequently adapted into two beloved and
controversial films, Imitation of Life has played a vital role in
ongoing conversations about race, femininity, and the American
Dream. Bea Pullman, a white single mother, and her African American
maid, Delilah Johnston, also a single mother, rear their daughters
together and become business partners. Combining Bea's business
savvy with Delilah's irresistible southern recipes, they build an
Aunt Jemima-like waffle business and an international restaurant
empire. Yet their public success brings them little happiness. Bea
is torn between her responsibilities as a businesswoman and those
of a mother; Delilah is devastated when her light-skinned daughter,
Peola, moves away to pass as white. Imitation of Life struck a
chord in the 1930s, and it continues to resonate powerfully
today.The author of numerous bestselling novels, a masterful short
story writer, and an outspoken social activist, Fannie Hurst was a
major celebrity in the first half of the twentieth century. Daniel
Itzkovitz's introduction situates Imitation of Life in its
literary, biographical, and cultural contexts, addressing such
topics as the debates over the novel and films, the role of Hurst's
one-time secretary and great friend Zora Neale Hurston in the
novel's development, and the response to the novel by Hurst's
friend Langston Hughes, whose one-act satire, "Limitations of Life"
(which reverses the races of Bea and Delilah), played to a raucous
Harlem crowd in the late 1930s. This edition brings a classic of
popular American literature back into print.
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