Review:
"A new edition of Albion Tourgee's neglected masterpiece on Reconstruction is long overdue. As Carolyn L. Karcher makes clear in her thorough and incisive introduction, Bricks Without Straw deserves to be ranked with Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition as one of the most important postbellum American novels to deal with race and African American history." --Mark Elliott, author of Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality
"Albion W. Tourgee's novel is a classic: a great read with some extraordinary insights into the Reconstruction era and post-Civil War American race relations. The centrality of blacks in the story makes it nearly unique in the literature of the period." --Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
"A new edition of Bricks Without Straw is a major event in the ongoing task of reconstructing the literature of Reconstruction. The lawyer/novelist Albion W. Tourgee was a tireless advocate of African American rights who criticized both North and South for the failures of Reconstruction. In her superb introduction, Carolyn L. Karcher makes a compelling case that Bricks, with its dramatic rendition of the forces undermining freedmen's efforts to secure economic and political independence, is Tourgee's best work of fiction."-- --Brook Thomas, author of Civic Myths: A Law-and-Literature Approach to Citizenship
About the Author:
Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905) was a soldier, journalist, attorney, judge, and prolific author of books, including the novel A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools (1879). As the lead attorney for the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Tourgee argued against the "separate but equal" doctrine. Carolyn L. Karcher is Professor Emerita at Temple University, where she taught English, American studies, and women's studies. Among her books are The First Woman of the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child and A Lydia Maria Child Reader, both also published by Duke University Press.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.