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Backwater BluesThe Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination$
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Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination

Richard M. Mizelle Jr.

Print publication date: 2014

Print ISBN-13: 9780816679256

Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015

DOI: 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679256.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM MINNESOTA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.minnesota.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of Minnesota Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MNSO for personal use.date: 28 September 2021

Burning Waters Rise

Burning Waters Rise

Richard Wright’s Blues Voice and the Double Environmental Burden of Race

Chapter:
(p.51) 2 Burning Waters Rise
Source:
Backwater Blues
Author(s):

Richard M. Mizelle

Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816679256.003.0003

Chapter II redefines the importance of Richard Wright’s protest literature and environmental blues voice through two short stories he published on the 1927 flood, “The Man Who Saw the Flood” and “Down by the Riverside.” Wright’s fascination with the 1927 flood suggests the disaster was still a powerful metaphor of race and environmentalism in the 1930s.

Keywords:   Disasters, Blues, Historical Fiction, Great Migration, Levees, 1928 Flood Control Act, Charity, New Deal, Mississippi Flood Control Project, Yazoo Mississippi Delta

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