In 1917 when H. L. Mencken belittled the South as -almost as sterile artistically, intellectually and culturally as the Sahara Desert, - he set off a reaction that is still reverberating today. The first issue of The Double Dealer out of New Orleans in 1921 pronounced it -high time, we believe, for some doughty clear-visioned penmen to emerge from the sodden marshes of Southern literature.- Hundreds did.
Supplanting the romantic novelists of the Old South, the new Southern fiction writer displayed an enormous diversity of interest and daring technique. Indeed, Southern fiction...

For a long time nothing much has changed for the poor black congregation of the Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church of Clearwater, Mississippi. Eastertime has dutifully rolled around again. The azaleas are in bloom.

And then off in the distance comes a wondrous music-a music that thunders throughout the sky with sweet majesty. It brings in its trail a celestial cloud and signals a heavenly visit: Jesus and Simon Peter have come to town. But they are women. Jewish women-well dressed and built like runway models, to be exact. "At times I've come to earth in the form of a man. But this time I've...