Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Welty, Eudora (Vol. 105) - Suzanne Marrs (essay date October 1986)

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Suzanne Marrs (essay date October 1986)

SOURCE: "The Metaphor of Race in Eudora Welty's Fiction," in The Southern Review, Vol. 22, No. 4, October, 1986, pp. 697-707.

[In the following essay, Marrs discusses certain aspects of African-American culture that Welty portrays in Delta Wedding and The Golden Apples including: "separateness despite intimate contact, a consequent and paradoxical freedom from white conventions, and a once common belief in ghosts and magic potions."]

During the 1930s and early 1940s Eudora Welty was almost as busy with her camera as with her typewriter. She photographed scenes and faces, tried to sell a book of her pictures, and gave a one-woman photographic show in New York City. A primary subject of these photographs was black life in Mississippi: a fortune teller in exotic costume, bottle trees designed to ward off evil spirits, a slave apron with a whole mythology stitched upon it, a black state...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Maureen Howard (review date 2 November 1980)
   2. Eudora Welty with Jo Brans (interview date Summer 1981)
   3. Paul Bailey (review date 4 June 1982)
   4. Nancy B. Sederberg (review date Fall 1983)
   5. Eudora Welty with Tom Royals and John Little (interview date 1984)
   6. Eric Homberger (review date 20 July 1984)
   7. Eudora Welty with Barbara Lazear Ascher (interview date Autumn 1984)
   8. Lee Smith (review date Spring 1985)
   9. Daniel Aaron (review date 2 May 1985)
   10. Harriet Pollack (essay date Fall 1986)
   11. Suzanne Marrs (essay date October 1986)
   12. Barbara Harrell Carson (essay date Spring 1988)
   13. Floyd C. Watkins (essay date Spring 1988)
   14. James Walter (essay date Fall 1988)
   15. Eudora Welty with Sally Wolff (interview date January 1990)
   16. Jan Nordby Gretlund (essay date Fall 1992)
   17. Sally Wolff (essay date Fall 1992)
   18. Eben E. Bass (essay date Spring 1993)
   19. Gary M. Ciuba (essay date Fall 1993)
   20. Alexandr Vaschenko (essay date Fall 1993)
   21. Carol Shields (review date 12 August 1994)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Eudora Welty