Voices of Persuasion

In this innovative study, Michael Staub recasts 1930s cultural history by analysing those genres so characteristic of the Depression era: Staub argues that several thirties writers – precisely because of their encounters with disinherited peoples – anticipated the dilemmas poststructuralist theory would identify; an awareness of the ambiguousness of historical truth, and the impossibility of representing reality without being complicit in its distortion. New interpretations of such canonised authors as James Agee, John Dos Passos, Zora Neale Hurston, John G. Neihardt, and Tille Olsen are coupled with critical discussions of previously little-known works of ethnography, journalism, oral history and polemical fiction. This book will interest all who are concerned with the problematic relationship betweeen representation and social reality and their mutual inextricability.

• Will appeal to ethnic studies • The thirties are really big now

Preface; 1. Spoken testimony, Unwritten History; 2. You won’t hear it nicely John Dos Passos and James Agee; 3. Telling native American history John Neihardt, William Benson and Ruth Underhill; 4. Talking black, talking back Zora Neale Hurston; 5. Giving the people voice Tillie Olsen and the Communist Press; Notes; Bibliography.