"Free to Be Me": Reformulating Blackness in Absalom, Absalom!, Remembering the Legacy of Sr. Thea Bowman in Faulkner Studies

Abstract

You ask why I, a black woman from Mississippi, am interested in William Faulkner? Faulkner has helped me understand my state. And it is my state. My people, as Faulkner records, helped build it, clearing wilderness, tilling land, building with brick and wood and water. And raising those children, and not just the black children. Faulkner has helped me to appreciate my state, both the glory and the shame of it. Faulkner also helped me to understand white folks, their ways of thinking and feeling and responding. And as a black child born in Mississippi, and as a black woman living in America, or anywhere, I need to understand white folks.