(I read this in a different edition that only included the ten "Color Line" stories, starting with "The Wife of His Youth." I did not read the "Conjure Tales.")

Charles Chesnutt's color line stories deal with race relations in the late nineteenth century United States. About half the stories are set in rural North Carolina, where Chesnutt was from, and the other half are set in a middle class black community in Michigan, probably somewhere around Detroit. Some of the stories are historical, taking place just before or during the Civil War, and the rest are set in Reconstruction or Gilded Age America, roughly contemporary with Chesnutt's young/middle adulthood.

The stories deal with complex issues in American race relations such as "passing," racial mixing both consensual and forced, white perceptions of black culture (and vice versa), prejudice within the African American community, and the legacies of slavery and the Civil War. Chesnutt also tackles difficult moral questions--does a former slave owe anything to his white owner/father? does such a father owe anything to his son? is passing wrong? how does white prejudice help create a culture of violence (on both sides)? why does skin color play such a role in how people are perceived and treated? In asking these questions, Chesnutt seems to prefigure many American writers of the twentieth century in his willingness to probe into the heart of racism.

Chesnutt writes of these devastating issues with a straightforward and often humorous tone, and it's true that many of the stories are quite funny. He deploys dramatic irony in a way similar to his contemporary, O. Henry, often using twist endings. However, there is also a solid vein of sentimentalism running through these stories. Despite their great psychological and social insight, the stories are not particularly modern in their form. This is a very interesting collection of stories that sheds much light on 19th c. America and on readers' relationships to their personal pasts and national history. ( )

Of the 4 stories I've read from this edition, I really enjoyed this author! I read "The Goophered Grapevine", "Po' Sandy", "The Wife of His Youth", and "Baxter's Procrustes". The dialect in "The Goophered Grapevine" (and by extension "Po' Sandy") can be hard to read -- at least I found it to be that way -- but the story is fantastic! I especially liked "Po' Sandy". "The Wife of His Youth" is really good, and "Baxter's Procrustes" I found to be really funny, in a sense. I wouldn't mind owning this edition and reading more of this author's works.

Adrianne ( )