U.S. Race Relations and Buried Literary Remains

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Notes

¹ Scholars debate the details of Marsdale’s biography, but a Google Books facsimile places her in Shreveport at the time of the story’s publication:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ILQRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT19&lpg=PT19&dq=Caroline+Marsdale,+%22Cousin+Jack%22&source=bl&ots=jWlHVucAp5&sig=ACfU3U116NGZcGfh1hgQSrZZ3PlniFXxWw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilqbPcwbTrAhUOlKwKHa9RBk4Q6AEwA3oECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=Caroline%20Marsdale%2C%20%22Cousin%20Jack%22&f=false Accessed 21 August 2020.

² Paul Elie concludes that critics must reassess O’Connor’s fiction in light of segregationist and racist views freely expressed in her letters. See “Everything That Rises: How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?”, p. 85.

³ See Kristina Kay Robinson’s description of Mixed Company’s current “Republica” program, conceived “to bolster the radical imagination necessary to ensuring an equitable future for us all”: https://platformsfund.org/project/republica-writing-and-art-from-the-free-territory/Accessed 20 August 2020.

⁴ See Smith’s “Remembering Katrina, Fifteen Years Later” for a discussion of the city’s economic obstructions, the result of long-term gatekeeping by state officials who profit from New Orleans’ arts culture but starve the city of appropriate funding.