Sundown Towns

Except for Jack, every man on that infield knew why Jimmy was hysterical. Catahoula was a strict sundown town, one of hundreds of all-white enclaves across the Deep South that passed laws and posted signs forbidding blacks to be inside their city limits after dark. Girls and women routinely escaped with ridicule and tongue lashings, but black males caught by the police were subject to fines or jail, and beatings or worse awaited any man of color captured by Klansmen after sunset. – p. 219

A Traveler Came ByJoel KeatsOctober 3, 2024Comment

Words You Can't Utter

The power of words, nearly impossible to exaggerate, has been eloquently described and praised. From Americans’ first days and their congenital embrace of chattel slavery and years later, mass immigration, a tidy dictionary of words and phrases could be collected to demonstrate how one group of Americans brands another. In the recent past, sensitivity and awareness of the labels we assign to one another has reached a high level, engendering new professions to deal with those terms. Certain nouns and pronouns are especially scrutinized.

A Traveler Came ByJoel KeatsOctober 3, 2024Comment

Love At First Sight

Famished and still waiting for his meal amid the fast-crowding tables, Jack’s eyes were drawn to a dark figure in the distance, from afar and at first just another silhouette strutting down the opposite side of the street, its details revealed by degrees. Light-footed and graceful with as much bounce to the bodice as her tresses, he could make out faint smiles, one for every person she passed, each answered with a bow or tip of the hat by the lucky object of her gaze. Enthralled, he leaned streetward and squinted for more: a bobbing, coal-black mane draped over soft shoulders, tiny waist, delicate legs tapering to petite ankles on low heels, and then, as her features came clear, a buttercream complexion, eyes to match the hair, and a face he’d seen only in dreams.

A Traveler Came ByJoel KeatsOctober 3, 2024Comment

A Traveler Came By— It’s historical fiction, but what more?

Of course, many novels seem to fit one genre or subgenre as well as others, and like literary fiction, they cross boundaries appealing to multiple audiences. At times labeled “mainstream fiction,” such works can’t be sorted until their public is determined. Unlike strict genre fiction, they may be easier or harder to sell, have ill-defined followings, and often depend more on author regognition than literary class, subject matter, or intrinsic value.

A Traveler Came ByJoel KeatsOctober 3, 2024Comment

A Traveler Comes By, South Louisiana 1964

A Traveler Comes By is set largely in mid-1960’s South Louisiana. Then as now, that geographic term is preferred by most natives to designate their incomparable homeland of marsh, swamp, bayous, and prairies stretching along the Gulf coast and inland from the margins of the Mississippi delta to the Sabine River on the Texas border. Acadiana and Acadia were and are common but less used monikers, allusions to the Cajuns’ lost homeland in the French Canada of the 1700’s. Rare reference is made to the antique Creole appellation, La Louisianne, a Louisiana French name first applied to the region by Acadian immigrants in the time of their diaspora. Though widespread in the South Louisiana of the 1960’s, Louisiana French is now an endangered tongue, on life support as a primary language in a handful of enclaves.

A Traveler Came ByAlexis WayneSeptember 3, 2024Comment