Green Thursday

by Julia Peterkin, Charles Joyner (Foreword)

Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness. In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride.

Genres: Short Stories

232 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

About the author

Julia Mood Peterkin won Pulitzer Prize for novel with Scarlet Sister Mary in 1929.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julia Peterkin was a white woman who lived in the coastal country of South Carolina, or "the low country", as it was known by. Her life spanned from 1880 to 1961. In 1903, she married a cotton planter and lived on a plantation (the Lang Syne Plantation) for the rest of her life. In the 1920s she published a collection of interlinked short stories (Green Thursday), which depicts the lives of poor rural blacks in the early part of the 20th Century. The Black folk of this region (coastal South Carolina, coastal Georgia, and the outlying islands, had a distinct ethnic identity, creole language and culture known as Gullah.

Peterkin also published several novels in her lifetime, including Scarlet Sister Mary, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1928. She wrote primarily about the Gullah people, not about black-white relationships, and she infused her fiction with authentic regional realism, avoiding the racial stereotypes that were typical of the writing of her time.

I highly recommend these stories and I look forward to reading her novels.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great treasure hidden for many years(at least from me), Julia Peterkin lived in Calhoun county near the junction of the Wateree and Congaree rivers where I spent much of my time fishing and exploring. A bare bones account of life in the South among black farmers. It is both a dark and inspiring testimony to human survival. A short read for a reminder of a time and place long gone but strangely near.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story presents elderly Maum Hannah who plays simple but gets her way with white folks seemingly none the wiser. She burns down the new house built on her lot and then turns herself in to the sheriff who laughs and sends her back to her hovel. Maum Hannah is the wise spirit lady to Killdee and Rose in the subsequent stories. Two major points emerge from reading of these stories. One is the all-consuming difficulty of feeding a family as a share-cropper. The other is that the dialect spoken by the characters is extreme. The ending of the final story actually surprises and seems well-crafted with Killdee going against type and deciding to make a change with his own self interest in mind.

[Myra Flowers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this stunning book because there was an upcoming class at my library about this author. The prose was direct yet elegant. Ms. Peterkin has created compelling characters who face real life issues with stalwart work ethic and determination to overcome, but are fallable humans. The writing flows beautifully despite tragedy and pathos of life. These are real people, not stereotypes. Living in South Carolina even now, I know the area it is set in and the locations are truly portrayed. Read this book for what it is. It would be a shame to see this book and these characters subjected to goofy modern political correctness.

[Ishrafil Abedin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is ultra good