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The twentieth century has seen two great waves of African American
migration from rural areas into the city, changing not only the
country's demographics but also black culture. In her thorough
study of migration to Houston, Bernadette Pruitt portrays the move
from rural to urban homes in Jim Crow Houston as a form of black
activism and resistance to racism. Between 1900 and 1950 nearly
fifty thousand blacks left their rural communities and small towns
in Texas and Louisiana for Houston. Jim Crow proscription,
disfranchisement, acts of violence and brutality, and rural poverty
pushed them from their homes; the lure of social advancement and
prosperity based on urban-industrial development drew them.
Houston's close proximity to basic minerals, innovations in
transportation, increased trade, augmented economic revenue, and
industrial development prompted white families, commercial
businesses, and industries near the Houston Ship Channel to recruit
blacks and other immigrants to the city as domestic laborers and
wage earners. Using census data, manuscript collections, government
records, and oral history interviews, Pruitt details who the
migrants were, why they embarked on their journeys to Houston, the
migration networks on which they relied, the jobs they held, the
neighborhoods into which they settled, the culture and institutions
they transplanted into the city, and the communities and people
they transformed in Houston.
The story of D.C. Caughran Jr., Mrs. Cordie's son, could be that of
almost any soldier in World War II. He left the comfort of home and
family to become part of one of the defining conflicts of modern
times. The letters he wrote home tell his story from the day he
received his draft notice in the summer of 1942 through battle,
capture, wounding, imprisonment, and his eventual return home for
recuperation and discharge.Author Rocky R. Miracle, the son-in-law
of D.C. Caughran, tells not only Caughran's story, but at the same
time the story of ""the home folks"" who anxiously watched for
letters from their ""soldier boy"" and wrote faithfully of their
love and prayers for his safety. This home-front narrative also
stands as an important and deeply personal record of life in
wartime.Taken prisoner during the German breakout of December 1944
that led to the Battle of the Bulge, D.C. was force-marched past
corpses lining the road into Germany, loaded with other American
prisoners into boxcars, and held in a prison camp during the
coldest European winter of the century. He suffered starvation
rations and hepatitis and was hospitalized after his liberation,
though doctors were doubtful that he would recover. However, with
time and care, he returned to health, was honorably discharged from
the U.S. Army, and lived a long, productive life.This intimate
portrait of an American family - at home and at war - during a time
of world upheaval is at once heartwarming, sobering, and
entertaining. ""Mrs. Cordie's Soldier Son"" is highly recommended
for readers interested in World War II, the POW experience, and
home-front literature.
Understanding Will Self introduces readers to the satire and
expressive ingenuity of a British writer who has garnered an array
of awards since the 1991 publication of his first short story
collection, ""The Quantity Theory of Sanity"". In this guide to the
well-received but largely unstudied writer, M. Hunter Hayes
examines the key themes, narrative strategies, and cultural
commentaries that characterize Self's work. Through close textual
analyses, Hayes guides readers through the alternative universe of
Self's writing and maps the interplay between his forays into
journalism and fiction. Marked by their combination of seemingly
improbable events and quotidian details, Self's novels, novellas,
and short stories examine contemporary English life through a mode
of writing that he has aptly termed ""dirty magical realism.""
Hayes shows how recurring characters have evolved through
successive works and in relation with their environments. He places
Self's writing within its historical and critical contexts and uses
each chapter to address either a single work or a group of closely
connected works. Hayes' analyses range from well-regarded novels to
notable yet uncollected short stories and draw upon secondary
critical texts to reassess Self's critical standing.
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