About this title: A Southern white writer, educator, and activist, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) spoke out all her life against injustice. In Killers of the Dream (1949), her most influential book, she draws on memories of her childhood to describe the psychological and moral cost of the powerful, contradictory rules about sin, sex, and segregation-the intricate system of taboos-that undergirded Southern society.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780393008845ISBN:0393008843
Description: Acceptable. Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780393008845ISBN:0393008843
Description: Good. 21-W-Add Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: Revised Ed. ed.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780393008845ISBN:0393008843
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. A very few highlighted sentences. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Doubleday & Co
Date Published: 1963
Description: Very Good. A check found highlighting in the book. Photos: We now have a scanner in-shop and can provide you with a picture of this item if you do not currently see one. read more
Edition: Rev. and enl.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y.
Date Published: 1963
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Slight cover soiling. Spine crease. Lioght cover wear. Crease front cover top corner. Tiny bend top corner 7 pages. 227 p.; 19 cm. Anchor books; A 339.. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Doubleday Anchor
Date Published: 1963
Description: Good Condition. Cover by George Giusti. Moderate wear, yellowing; good sound book; clean text. "An autobiography of a Southerner and an analysis of the South. " A339. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: 2 lbs 0 oz. Category: Biography & Autobiography Inventory No: 078986. read more
Edition: Stated First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York
Date Published: 1949
Description: Very Good- in Fair jacket. DJ has significant tears and creases, with light rubbing and soils; some soils on book exterior, inscription on leaf, some underlining. A narrative and commentary on society, racism and sexism, and religious faith. 256 pages. read more
Description: Good. 0393008843 19141 PB: spine smooth, text clean, cover has slight shel fwear-allow up to 21 business days for standard USPS media m a i l. wt1lbpf. read more
Edition: Rev. and enl.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y.
Date Published: 1963
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. (060906) Mass Market Paperback is in VG +/Fine condition with slight spine darkening. slight spine slant, extremely light overll wear. 227 p.; 19 cm. Anchor books; A 339.. read more
"This was the first book on the syllabus for ENG/Women's Studies 307, (100 years of Southern Women Writers), in which I am serving as a graduate-level TA. It seemed too dry and abstract at first, but, as we progressed into novels by black women writers like Alice Walker and autobiographical writing by Zora Neale Hurston and others, it proved to serve as a good background about the ways of thinking in the segregated south."
"Upon reading the very first page, I knew I had a very special book in my hands. This is one of the most beautifully written and insightful books I have ever read, with an honesty and moral awareness one would find in the writings of Robert Coles.
Part One, "The Dreamers" chronicles Ms. Smith's life, as well as what she observed of the South as a Southerner herself.
Part Two, "The White Man's Burden," Ms. Smith explains how segregation shuts out not only blacks, but also whites.
Part Three, "Giants of the Earth," discusses how the powers to be, men in politics and business leaders, created the current situtation of segregation in the South and the reasons they wish to maintain the status quo.
Part Four, "The Dream and Its Killers," explores how the very future of humanity, "the Dream," depends on a willingness to embrace positive change and challenge those aspects of the status quo that aim to keep that from happening."
"This is interesting mostly as a look at person who wrote it. I'd been mostly in the dark as to the activities of the vocal minority of anti-segregation white southerners of the 40's and 50's. It's powerfully dated in its fixation on Freud and Communism and in her insistent use of extravagant metaphor (she devotes an entire unreadable early chapter to an allegorical play allegedly put on at a summer camp by the world's most articulate, race-conscious, reflective, melodramatic, and generally Lilian Smith-like children I've ever encountered).
She has interesting ideas about the relationship between gender inequality, sexuality, and racial dynamics, and about the complicated and psychologically destructive process southern children (mostly white) underwent in learning the unwritten rules of the Jim Crow south. In the end, though, it's mostly interesting as a look into her own mind, since the activist, feminist, liberal southerner is kind of a neglected historical aside. I'm glad I read it."
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