A01=Rebecca Hollingsworth
Author_Rebecca Hollingsworth
Category=FV
Cultural heritage fiction
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eq_fiction
eq_historical-fiction
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Historical books about race
Historical fiction books
South Carolina books
Southern fiction
Southern historical fiction books
United states fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9781626349155
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 27 Oct 2022
- Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group LLC
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Past meets present in South Carolina. At first, Gillian Culkin, a research librarian in Columbia, South Carolina, feels only mildly perturbed by the protestors outside her office, arguing over the presence of the Confederate flag waving boldly over the State House. As a White Southerner, she hadn't given much thought to racial issues. But after meeting local preacher and Black televangelist Reverend Joe Pearl, who shares bits of history unknown to Gil, she realizes the flag represents far deeper, more entrenched issues of race and inequality.
Meanwhile, her job requires transcribing the 19th-century diary of a South Carolina slave owner named William Medlin. A farmer who's an expert on Southern agricultural details, Medlin himself becomes a slaveholder. As he recounts (and Gil transcribes) the tragic journey he undertakes with his newly acquired slave, Medlin's views of slavery change. At the same time, Gil finds her own views on race evolving.
The two narratives-one told in the present, the other in the past-provide a probing and insightful look at what it means to be human within an often inhumane system, and what responsibility each of us has to one another.
Rebecca Hollingsworth was raised in rural Florida, which she says was every bit as backward as any place in the Deep South. With a degree in graphic design from the University of Florida, she moved to New York City in 1968 to work in advertising. After several years, she turned South again, this time to Atlanta, her home for the next 35 years. Growing restless after 15 years in advertising and design, she started a service business in Atlanta, which she ran successfully for 20 years until a nationwide company purchased it, allowing her to retire at age 50.
She moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a history town that offered endless avenues of exploration into the past. Her philanthropic work assembling a collection of slave artifacts for the Ryan Slave Mart Museum in Charleston grew out of her interest in the institution of slavery. From there she started trying to understand influences on modern day Black/White conflicts. In the year 2000, flack over the Confederate flag flying from the dome of the State House in Columbia forced Southerners to face the complications of race as they never had.
Born in 1945, the author vividly remembers seeing White and Colored drinking fountains as a child. The Catbird Seat offers rich personal observations and historical research that bring to the reader a deeply thoughtful and honest perspective on race, not likely to be found elsewhere.
