Charles Chesnutt

The House Behind the Cedars, which many consider Charles Chesnutts nest novel, tells of John and Lena Walden, mulatto siblings who pass for white in the postbellum American South. The drama that unfolds as they travel between black and white worlds constitutes a riveting portrait of the shifting and intractable nature of race in American life. This...

A NovelIn this provocative novel of reconstruction and race, a Civil War veteran tries to create a new utopia in his Southern hometown after gaining enlightenment and riches in the North.Revolutionary in both its storyline and its storytelling, The Colonels Dream was one of the most progressive books of its time when it was first published in 1905....