HUM 3085: Florida Culture Fall 2010

On Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills (1985)

Casting Luther Nedeed Luther Nedeed Luther Nedeed Luther Nedeed Putney Wayne Grandma Tilson Lester Tilson Roxanne Tilson Willie K. Mason Norm Anderson Ruth Anderson Winston Alcott David Cassandra Chester Parker Lycentia S. Parker Luwana Packerville Xavier Donnell Maxwell Smyth Evelyn Creton

Migration Tupelo, Mississippi Wayne County Brewster Place Linden Hills

Development Railroad lines: automobile (5) Desegregation (131-8)

Location, Location, Location First Crescent: Tilsons Second Crescent: Winston (to Tupelo) Third Crescent: Xavier Fourth Crescent: Parkers Designs “Just sit right here and they’ll make you a rich man through the two things they’ll all have to do: live and die. Nedeed watched the sun, the twentieth century, and the value of his hard, sod hill creep upward as slowly and concretely as the last laugh from a dead man’s grave” (6).

“Like his father, he saw where the future of Wayne County—the future of America—was heading. It was going to be white: white money backing wars for white power because the very earth was white—look at it—white gold, white silver, white coal running white railroads and steamships, white oil fueling white automotives” (8).

“And the fools would never realize—he looked down at his son playing with a toy dragon —that It was nothing but light from a hill of carbon paper dolls” (10).

“He stood under the door fronts of imitation Swiss chalets, British Tudors, and Georgian town houses flanked by arbors choked with morning glories, wisteria, and honeysuckle” (10).

“Yes, they would invest their past and apprentice their children to the future of Linden Hills, forgetting that a magician’s supreme art is not in transformation but in making things disappear” (12).

“Just stay right here; you step outside Linden Hills and you’ve stepped into history— someone else’s history about what you couldn’t ever do. The Nedeeds had made a history there and it spoke loudly of what blacks could do.” (16)