Born and raised in the deep South, Lillian Smith lived most of her adult life with her companion Paula Snelling on a mountain top in North Georgia, where they ran a summer girl’s camp, published a literary magazine called South Today, and spoke out brilliantly and often on the problems of race, gender, and class in the South. In 1944 Smith published her most famous work of fiction, Strange Fruit, a novel dealing with the effects of segregation on both races in a small southern town. In 1949 Lillian Smith wrote perhaps her finest work, Killers of the Dream, in which she asked a probing and provocative question, "Why has the white man dreamed so fabulous a dream of freedom and human dignity, and again and again tried to kill his own dream?" Some biographical information on Lillian Smith and some background on Killers of the Dream can be found here, here, and here. How is this book similar to The Making of a Southerner? How is it stylistically and analytically different? What do you make of what you've read so far?
(Aaron Nugent)
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed Killers of the Dream so far. It is a very different book compared to Making of a Southerner, but does have that sense of awakening from a childhood of white supremacy and white ideology.
Smith includes herself in her autobiography from the very start and includes a few instances of trauma from her childhood and early adult life.
We also see the fear and anxiety from one of her campers who faces the dilemma after their play of the The Prince. A play that sought to question their southern ideologies. "It's all wrong," she says, "You made us think of ourselves as no better than other people. You shouldn't have done that" (51). We see the fear first hand from the southern teens who have to re-enter southern life with new ideologies. She realizes the rift between what her life has been, and what it should be in a more egalitarian world, but is so upset because she knows those two worlds cannot reconcile.
The shock from her town if she invited a colored girl over to her house - "they'd think I was crazy... Can't you see their faces- Mother's and Daddy's- and everybody's. Well, I can- especially if they arrested me and put me in jail" (52). The girl is afraid of the consequences that could come about from a change in her actions. Smith explores this dilemma and will hopefully comment on in in the rest of the book.
Smith reproaches the southern society in a personal and emotional way, while Lumpkin does it in an analytical way. Lumpkin analyses her society with a number of detailed historical facts, cultural facts and complex mentality that sustain these elements; then, she distances herself from her community in a subtle way, as we discussed in class. Smith, on the other hand, focuses on the emotional confrontation between Southern tradition and reality, especially, doubts in the parents’ authority. She writes, “I was shamed by their failure and frightened, for I felt they were no longer as powerful as I had thought” (37). Her student in the camp fears justice which has grown in her mind and makes her “unfitted for the South” (54). She tells herself “segregation is right” and “Daddy knows more than we know here at camp” (55). Passing down the tradition from one generation to another creates strong emotional attachment and loyalty to parents, and it is difficult to oppose parents’ authority, and thus, segregation in the south.
ReplyDeleteYay! Lilliam Smith! I have read some excerpts from Killers of a Dream before and really loved it; I was excited to be reading the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteHer style is so vivacious and fiesty; Smith has something to say and we will hear it. The writing is vastly different than Lumpkin's book. Smith instantly touches on the intense emotional issues surrounding the South and Jim Crow. She lets herself freely enter the text and make comments on past situations - how they made her feel then and now. Her writing keeps the reader engaged in the questions she ponders.
She also addresses the issue of silence and repression in the South during segregation. How people created fantasies and lied to themselves in order to go about their lives in a clearly corrupted system. Like with the camper at the end of the reading who is going "tell [her kids] that Jim Crow is fine, and that it's legal, that this is the way things are in the South and the way things are going to stay" (54). She'll let them live a lie so they won't be conflicted with thoughts of equality, brotherhood, and the notion they are hypocrites. She cannot reconcile Jim Crow and all that she has been taught, so like many Southerners she is sinking into repression and denial.
I also like how Smith goes beyond just racial issues and takes up those of sexuality and the body. For her the South is a maze of taboos and not just those of Jim Crow but also about how one must treat the body and never talk about it. I'm pretty sure she addresses this more fully later on.
I've really enjoyed this book so far. Honestly, I was sad when our section of the reading was over; it left off in the middle of an excellent conversation. Anyway, I think Smith takes a much more direct approach to her autobiography than Lumpkin did. Right from the beginning Smith acutually uses the word "sex." This is something that none of our autobiographers have been able to be completely direct about. They usually dance around the term and merely draw loose correlations to the act through their language. I applaude her for this. Smith's language is so rich. It is full of metaphors and at the same time a certain amount of ambiguity with her personification of the South at the opening.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoy the way Smith seemingly paints a picture for you. By putting the play within the text, Smith points out how comletely absurd segregation was in a way which even a child can understand. I thought this was so masterful to have the southern child (Prince) and all his travelling companions-- Conscience, Southern Tradition, Science, and Religion. We see the clash of values in southern life so blantenly here.
From the outset this book is much more abrasive than The Making of a Southerner: although still dealing with many of the same issues, the argument at hand is in itself made obvious, while many of the devices used to discuss it aren't. Smith moves in and out of the dream of her life, shifts from past to present in unseen instances, and gives us insights into events that are not clearly defined as fact or metaphor. It becomes more and more difficult to discern, as the southern play version of The Little Prince is performed on a mountain top in the summer, whether what we are reading is a recreation of some vague idea only present deep in the the minds of these children, or in the mind of Lillian Smith. The age of the children speaking is at first hard to determine, just as it is difficult to determine just who's feelings are being displayed. In a soft blend of fiction, allegory, intense imagery, memory, history and psychology, Smith gives us dreams and reason, and snatches them away with harsh reality, and gives them back, as the search for truth and common sense continues.
ReplyDeleteFrom the very first page, Smith and Lumpkin create very different narratives. Lumpkin begins her book with both family and social history, which reflects the ingrained tradition of Southern heritage. In a way, the place that Lumpkin chooses to begin her autobiography reflects her own internalization of Southern tradition even as her book is a conversion narrative. Smith, however, begins more radically--she summates her childhood in a series of prosopopeaic reflections and then "vignettes" certain experiences.
ReplyDeleteThe books are incredibly different stylistically as well. Lumpkin takes a more traditional narrative route. She, like many writers before her, follow the path of structuralism; in other words, her narrative is incredibly linear. She's also incredibly didactic and historically minded. Smith seems to be playing with autobiography a bit. I couldn't help but think back to Wright's Black Boy in terms of her writing style. I love the way Smith writes: her description is phenomenal, and the book just feels more "literary" than Lumpkin's "textbook" approach. It's important to remember, though, that both narratives remain incredibly important. Just because Lumpkin is not experimenting with style doesn't mean that her story is any less valid than Smith's, and I'm afraid sometimes we conflate the "likeableness" of a book with its significance.
Obviously, as we discussed in class, stylistically Lillian's book is a lot more different than Katharine's. She uses direct language and there are no subtleties like "The Making of a Southerner". However, there are some slight similarities. Both put their fathers on pedalstals and made them come off as "God-like". However, they finally came to reality and realized that everything their fathers said wasn't the truth. "The Making of a Southerner" was a lot harder at the beginning because of the dense history but "Killers of the Dream" was a lot easier because it was on a much more personal level. Both women had their realities shaken during their youth and their ideals were quickly questioned but from what we have read I think that Lillian will realize this much quicker than Katharine did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with A. Robinson that Smith’s autobiography feels decidedly more “‘literary’” than Lumpkin’s “‘textbook’ approach,” and I love it for that. If we consider the genre, if we consider the goal of conveying truths with or without factual bases, it follows that the writing style should be accessible, even relatable. I do not mean to imply that Lumpkin’s work is impenetrable, or that we cannot glean manifold powerful truths from it. But the added potency of the personal touch, the stream-of-consciousness, the richness of description and the often wistful retrospective evaluation we find in Killers, as in parts of Mary and Black Boy, is invaluable. I am confident we can expect a more satisfying catharsis in the end, where we have met unresolved disillusionment in the past.
ReplyDeleteLillian Smith takes a much more personal tone than Lumpkin throughout her work. This is evident in her blatant sarcasm and disgust for the racial situation in the South. However, in addition to her somewhat less than anthropologic description of the South, Smith's structure suggests a more personal work. The events, instead of being presented in a basically linear, traditional format, are given to the reader in episodic bursts with random events scattered throughout. While Lumpkin's work could at times read more like a history book, Smith's work reads like what it is, a very personal narrative of a person during a significant time in history.
ReplyDeleteSmith's _Killers_ is very interest for a lot of reasons, but one thing that has captured my attention the most is the play of different voices in the text. Smith is so crafty about the ways in which she gives voices to the different forces at work in the South that she is describing, whether the force of southern tradition or of religion. Perhaps the best example of this tactic so far is in the chapter "The Lessons"--I caught myself reading through Smith's description of the various "lessons" (read ideologies) imparted to southern children for quite some time before I realized the narrative voice was not Smith's. I paused to ask myself who or what exactly was speaking. I felt pleasantly tricked. The absent speaker in Smith's text mimics the same absent speaker in all our psyches--who is it that teaches our lessons? Is it really simply THEY WHO MAKE THE RULES?
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