Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writer. Harris<|

The Scary Mason-Dixon LineAfrican American Writers and the South\nAuthor(s): Trudier Harris\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Louisiana State University Press, United States\nImprint: Louisiana State University Press\nISBN-13: 9780807152300, 978-0807152300\nSynopsis\nNew Yorker James Baldwin once declared that a black man can look at a map of the United States, contemplate the area south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and thus scare himself to death. In The Scary Mason-Dixon Line, renowned literary scholar Trudier Harris explores why black writers, whether born in Mississippi, New York, or elsewhere, have consistently both loved and hated the South. Harris explains that for these authors the South represents not so much a place or even a culture as a rite of passage. Not one of them can consider himself or herself a true African American writer without confronting the idea of the South in a decisive way. \n\nHarris considers native-born black southerners Raymond Andrews, Ernest J. Gaines, Edw.