Ollie Miss

by George Wylie Henderson, Lowell Leroy Balcolm (Illustrator)

"Ollie Miss is a character you don't forget ... this book is part of American as well as Black American literature." — Academic Library Book Review
Men are paralyzed in the presence of Ollie Miss, stunned by her vivid sensuality. Combining beauty, strength, composure, and self-sufficiency, she emerges from nowhere to take an all-black backwoods settlement in Macon Country, Georgia, by storm. Despite her poverty and her lack of education, Ollie Miss is determined to make a life for herself as she struggles to find independence, romance, and fulfillment.
One of the key novels of the 1930s Harlem Renaissance, Ollie Miss was published to widespread critical acclaim. A major contribution to the rich legacy of African-American literature, the evocative tale unfolds in the early decades of the twentieth century. Set amid a community of sharecroppers in the deep South, the story provides an atmospheric record of the period of social change that culminated in the civil rights movement.

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 18, 2018

Reviews

[Brian Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Down Home Alabama

Very informative view into the relationships that developed in the rural post reconstruction south. I found it helpful in my attempt to recreate the community life of my ancestors.

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ollie Miss is set in rural Alabama sometime around 1900. But it really could be any time in any primitive society as everything revolves around cycles of plowing, planting, milking, harvesting, and slaughtering. Everyone is poor and just getting buy. Even the landowner, “Uncle Alex” and his wife, while able to hire a number of farm hands, live only marginally above their help, and interact with them as though they are family. These folks live in a world that is completely separate from the outside world. This allows Henderson to concentrate on his characters’ relationship to the land and explore their motivations. They work in the cotton fields, flirt, drink and dance, go to church, and have sex—all without a great deal of reflection or a broader goal. Still there is nobility, an admirable humanity in these people. They speak simply (some might be offended by their “slave talk”), but it often reveals deeper knowledge of human behavior. Ollie is a creature of nature—she does what she wants when she wants. She sees the advantages of going along with the crowd, but she will not be swayed by anyone or anything to do something she does not want to. She is a force of nature, but she is someone who also needs a reason to live. At first that reason is her love for Jule, a worker on a nearby farm, but when that leads to tragedy, she gives up on life. As she recovers from an attack, she finds another reason to live, and one senses that things will continue on in that cycle until the end of time. A quite beautiful and moving book.