The Enfreakment of Southern Memoir in Harry Crews’s A Childhood

• Published in: The Mississippi quarterly 2014, Vol.67 (2), p.193-211
• Main Author: Vernon, Zackary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 20th century; American literature; Autobiographies; Crews, Harry (1935-2012); Fiction; Genre; Nonfiction; Social exclusion
• ISSN: 0026-637X; 2689-517X; 2689-517X
• DOI: 10.1353/mss.2014.0013

The landscape of Harry Crews's fiction and nonfiction is inhabited by enfreaked individuals -- those stigmatized and in some cases even exiled from their communities because of physical, psychological, or spiritual defects. Crews's exploration of enfreakment forces his readers to confront and ideally empathize with those who have extraordinary bodies. In doing so, Crews posits that we can deconstruct socially contextualized marginalization and that we can learn valuable lessons about the human experience from people who, willingly or not, exist outside the normative confines of a given community. In the end, Crews's contribution to Grit Lit and Southern memoir is to bring "freaks" and the grotesque to the fore of these overlapping genres. Enfreakment has become a defining characteristic of Southern memoir and, more importantly, it has helped to revise conceptions of freakishness within Southern communities that are themselves often the victims of class- and race-based marginalization.