Post-Plantation and Post-Hawthorne Poputchik Writing: The Peculiarly American Time and Place of Julia Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary

• Published in: European journal of American studies 2024-07, Vol.19 (2)
• Main Author: Linzie, Anna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African Americans; American history; American literature; Black history; Black people; Culture; Engelska; English; Fiction; Jordan; Julia Peterkin; Literary history; literary value; Peterkin, Julia Mood (1880-1961); Plantations; poputchik writing; post-Hawthorne American literature; post-plantation America; Pulitzer prizes; Race relations; Roll; Scarlet Sister Mary; Writers; Writing
• ISSN: 1991-9336; 1991-9336

American writer Julia Peterkin (1880–1961) represents a downhill trajectory in terms of literary prominence, from the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1929 to obscurity now, almost 100 years later. For a few years in the 1920s and 1930s, Peterkin was one among few white American authors who wrote primarily about black American lives and experiences. She can be seen as a temporary ally in relation to the contemporary political and cultural situation of black America. This article focuses on Scarlet Sister Mary (1928), Peterkin’s most famous and controversial novel, and explores what happened to her literary reputation later, in the historical context of the early 1930s and in connection with the publication of Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933). My claim is that Peterkin’s work engages American history and American literary history from a specifically American point in time, post-plantation era and post-Hawthorne, that temporarily allows and even rewards the literary blackface and racial/racist oscillation of Peterkin as a poputchik writer, a fellow traveler in relation to black America.