The South/Western Gothic: White Capitalist Zombies in Katherine Anne Porter's Noon Wine

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Set from 1896 to 1905 in South Texas, Katherine Anne Porter's 1939 short novel Noon Wine chronicles the arrival of a strange man named Olaf Helton whose labor transforms the Thompson family's failing farm into a thriving enterprise. Pointed mentions of vanished Black workers replaced by this conspicuously "foreign" white man provide an uncanny reading of the role of racialized labor, illuminating methods through which the United States has built its regions and nation upon related forms of exploitation.