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Driven to the Field
Sharecropping and Southern Literature
David A. Davis
- 334 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Driven to the Field
Sharecropping and Southern Literature
David A. Davis
About This Book
Driven to the Field traces the culture of sharecroppingâcrucial to understanding life in the southern United Statesâfrom Emancipation to the twenty-first century. By reading dozens of works of literature in their historical context, David A. Davis demonstrates how sharecropping emerged, endured for a century, and continues to resonate in American culture. Following the end of slavery, sharecropping initially served as an expedient solution to a practical problem, but it quickly developed into an entrenched power structure situated between slavery and freedom that exploited the labor of Blacks and poor whites to produce agricultural commodities.
Sharecropping was the economic linchpin in the South's social structure, and the region's political system, race relations, and cultural practices were inextricably linked with this peculiar form of tenant farming from the end of the Civil War through the civil rights movement. Driven to the Field analyzes literary portrayals of this system to explain how it defined the culture of the South, revealing multiple genres of literature that depicted sharecropping, such as cotton romances, agricultural uplift novels, proletarian sharecropper fiction, and sharecropper autobiographiesâimportant works of American literature that have never before been evaluated and discussed in their proper context.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Sharecropping, Labor Exploitation, and Southern Literature
- 2. Sharecropping, Reconstruction, and Postbellum Literature
- 3. The New Slavery
- 4. Americaâs Number One Economic Problem
- 5. The End of Sharecropping
- 6. The Afterlife of Sharecropping
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index