Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin

Joy Jordan-Lake examines the ways in which antebellum women novelists tried to counter Harriet Beecher Stoweís enormously popularUncle Tom's Cabinby preaching a ìtheology of whitenessî from within the pages of the books - but were ultimately undermined by their own proslavery agendas. Including a discussion of twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels that revisit plantation mythology,Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabincasts new light on the ethical and moral disaster of securing one groupís economic strength at the expense of other groupsí access to dignity, compassion, and justice.

Joy Jordan-Lake formerly taught English at Baylor University and is currently writing and teaching part-time at Belmont University in Nashville