Southern Strategies

Narrative Negotiation in an Evangelical Region

Michael Odom

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978-1-64336-465-0
Published: Mar 7 2024

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A study of how literary strategies illuminate the evangelical foundation of Southern culture.

In Southern Strategies: Narrative Negotiation in an Evangelical Region, Michael Odom argues that through the narrative strategies of resistance, satire, and negotiation, a multigenerational group of twentieth-century white Southern writers provides unique insight into the central role evangelical religion has played in shaping the sociopolitical culture of the American South. Odom investigates how W. J. Cash and Lillian Smith confront both the racist culture of their time and the religious institutions that enabled white supremacy to flourish; insider-outsider Catholic writers Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy satirize American consumption and the antithetical imperative of evangelical Christianity subsumed within the same culture; and Doris Betts and Dennis Covington engage evangelical religion with curiosity and compassion, redefining spirituality with the aim of providing a sense of community, vision, and selfhood. Southern Strategies concludes with an analysis of contemporary responses to the evangelical activism that animates the base of American conservatism today.

Michael Odom is associate professor of English at CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College. He has been published in scholarly journals such as South Atlantic Review, Southern Literary Journal, and Flannery O'Connor Review.

"After discussing how W. J. Cash, Lillian Smith, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy critique evangelicalism, Michael Odom examines Dennis Covington and Doris Betts to show that it is still possible to see evangelicals as genuine."—Marshall Bruce Gentry, editor, Flannery O'Connor Review

"Odom's work complements existing scholarship by showing how a number of Southern twentieth-century writers engage not only with religion but also with the class-demarcated varieties of white conservative evangelicalism that are hegemonic in their region."—Ken Paradis, Wilfrid Laurier University

"Odom has approached the Southern character from a new and nuanced angle."—Toby LeBlanc, Southern Review of Books

Southern Strategies

Narrative Negotiation in an Evangelical Region

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