Rebecca Godwin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802330
- eISBN:
- 9781496804990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802330.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter discusses Kaye Gibbons's work, which portrays wise and hardworking women whose gumption improves the lot of the suffering lower class. Born Bertha Kaye Batts on May 5, 1960, Kaye Gibbons ...
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This chapter discusses Kaye Gibbons's work, which portrays wise and hardworking women whose gumption improves the lot of the suffering lower class. Born Bertha Kaye Batts on May 5, 1960, Kaye Gibbons grew up in a Nash County, North Carolina, farming community named Bend of the River. When Gibbons was ten, her mother committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills; her father drank himself to death soon thereafter. Orphaned at age twelve, Gibbons lived briefly with an aunt and then in a foster home, before moving in with her married older brother. Gibbons learned early to love the written word, a key to her survival. Her first novel, Ellen Foster, was published in 1987, and its sequel, The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster, in 2006. Gibbons's second novel, A Virtuous Woman (1989), features a character whose inner conflict highlights the tension between the Rough South and the working-class South her family represents. Gibbons's other novels include A Cure for Dreams (1991) and Charms for the Easy Life (1993).Less
This chapter discusses Kaye Gibbons's work, which portrays wise and hardworking women whose gumption improves the lot of the suffering lower class. Born Bertha Kaye Batts on May 5, 1960, Kaye Gibbons grew up in a Nash County, North Carolina, farming community named Bend of the River. When Gibbons was ten, her mother committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills; her father drank himself to death soon thereafter. Orphaned at age twelve, Gibbons lived briefly with an aunt and then in a foster home, before moving in with her married older brother. Gibbons learned early to love the written word, a key to her survival. Her first novel, Ellen Foster, was published in 1987, and its sequel, The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster, in 2006. Gibbons's second novel, A Virtuous Woman (1989), features a character whose inner conflict highlights the tension between the Rough South and the working-class South her family represents. Gibbons's other novels include A Cure for Dreams (1991) and Charms for the Easy Life (1993).
Maria Holmgren Troy, Elizabeth Kella, and Helena Wahlström
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089596
- eISBN:
- 9781781707289
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089596.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on John Irving’s The Cider House Rules (1985), and Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster (1987) and The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster (2006), novels that remember earlier American and ...
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This chapter focuses on John Irving’s The Cider House Rules (1985), and Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster (1987) and The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster (2006), novels that remember earlier American and English novels to revise the conventions of the bildungsroman and challenge its conventional gender boundaries. In the process, the novels describe the kinship building of the protagonists, who develop complex understandings of kinship ties and a consciously affirmative stance on the value of “alternative family.” Because they are orphans, Irving’s and Gibbons’s protagonists are outsiders, but because they are white they may still lay claim to the dominant formulation of American identity; and the challenge they launch against the nuclear family ideal may be effectual precisely because they occupy a position of racial privilege.Less
This chapter focuses on John Irving’s The Cider House Rules (1985), and Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster (1987) and The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster (2006), novels that remember earlier American and English novels to revise the conventions of the bildungsroman and challenge its conventional gender boundaries. In the process, the novels describe the kinship building of the protagonists, who develop complex understandings of kinship ties and a consciously affirmative stance on the value of “alternative family.” Because they are orphans, Irving’s and Gibbons’s protagonists are outsiders, but because they are white they may still lay claim to the dominant formulation of American identity; and the challenge they launch against the nuclear family ideal may be effectual precisely because they occupy a position of racial privilege.
