Description

Whittlesey House, New York [Published date: 1947]. Hard cover, 364 pp. First Edition. Good/ NO dust jacket. Green cloth covered boards with brown block and gold lettering on spine. Light white spots on front edge of top cover and back cover. Light overall rubbing and faint soiling. Binding tight. Light foxing to edges of text block. Pages yellowed but otherwise clean and unmarked with occasional light age spotting. NOT Ex-library. NO remainder marks. Missing dust jacket. Wild Grape is one of several novels about intolerance and racism that came out after the Second World War. These tolerance novels, published in 1947, include Sinclair Lewis’s Kingsblood Royal, Will Thomas's God Is for White Folks, and Cid Ricketts Sumner's Quality and are all but forgotten today. [From Delton, J. A. A. "Before the White Negro: Sin and Salvation in Kingsblood Royal." American Literary History, vol. 15 no. 2, 2003, pp. 311-333.] "The tolerance genre was popular fiction or journalism that depicted the tragedies and irrationality of white racism. Also categorized as "social problem" books, they were often, but not always, written by white people who, like Lillian Smith and Margaret Halsey, brought their experiences as whites to their explorations of racism... The lessons within them reflected the new thinking about race and racism that had emerged during the war."