User:CatVallejo/sandbox

"the Birmingham News declared, "Mary Johnston is a Birmingham woman. She has neared the top of the modern literary ladder. It was here that she began her career and developed those talents that have made her name known throughout civilization."

Answers for Week 7, Activity 2

President George W Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Harper Lee, 2007

Media: image of Harper Lee recieving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Image is not my own work, but was published by the US Federal Government and does not have any copyright restrictions.

Alabama Literature

Alabama literature includes the prose fiction, poetry, films and biographies that are set in or created by those from the US state of Alabama. This literature officially began emerging from the state circa 1819 with the recognition of the region as a state. Like other forms of literature from the South, Alabama literature often discusses issues of race, stemming from the events of slavery, the American Civil War, the Reconstruction era and Jim Crow laws and the US Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was particularly influential on Alabama literature due to the Montgomery Bus Boycott taking place in the state, along with other significant events of the Movement.

Some of the most notable pieces of literature from this region include Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Winston Groom’s novel Forrest Gump and the 1994 film adaptation of the same name, and Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe and the 1991 film adaptation. The biographies of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are also highly significant.

Pre-Civil War (1819 to 1861)

From the recognition of Alabama as a state in 1819 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, this era of literature, like other forms of early literature emerging around the newly- United States contain strong themes of nationalism and discussions of race centered around slavery and the political unrest in the lead up to the Civil War. Notable works from this period include the works of Albert J Pickett, Alexander Beaufort Meek, Johnson J Hooper, and Caroline Lee Hentz.

Modern (Late 19th Century to Early 20th Century)

Displaying the conventions of Modernism found in literature throughout the Western world, literature in Alabama was also characterised by discussions of themes that were also seen throughout the South and other parts of the country. These themes included issues of race, in response to the Jim Crow laws of the late 19th century up to the mid 20th century and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, issues of gender, and issues of war, in response to the First World War, the Second World War, and the Vietnam War.

Fiction

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is widely recognised as the most influential work to come out of Alabama in all its literary history and is one of the most well-read novels in the English language. The novel follows the young Scout Finch who is being raised along with her brother by their widowed father, Atticus. Throughout the book they are often treated as outsiders, leading to them bonding with others who felt like this, such as their neighbour Boo Radley. The central conflict of the novel is when Atticus defends a black man accused of rape. Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1926, and while her work was influenced by the larger events occurring across the state and country, the influence of three specific cases from her youth is recognisable in her work; firstly, the Scottsboro Boys case in 1931 to 1937 in northern Alabama involving black men accused of rape, a case in Monroeville in 1933 with significant parallels to the case in To Kill A Mockingbird, and the confrontation between her father, Amasa (the inspiration for the character Atticus), and members of the Klu Klux Klan outside their house in 1934. To Kill a Mockingbird spent 98 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and in 1961, Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The film adaptation of the novel premiered in 1962 and would go on to win three Academy Awards. Go Set A Watchman  was published in 2015 after many issues with Lee’s health.