{"product_id":"the-house-behind-the-cedars-9780812966169","title":"The House Behind the Cedars","description":"\u003cb\u003eCharles Chesnutt's classic novel, hailed by Werner Sollors as \"a pioneering work of racial passing.\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEdited and featuring an introduction and notes from Judith Jackson Fossett.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA riveting portrait of the shifting and intractable nature of race in American life, \u003ci\u003eThe House Behind the Cedars \u003c\/i\u003efollows John and Rena Walden, mixed-race siblings who pass for white in the postbellum American South. The siblings travel carefully between Black and white worlds, but their precarious routine is threatened when Rena falls in love with a white man and hides her true heritage to start a life with him. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis edition revitalizes a much-neglected masterpiece by one of our most important African American writers. As Werner Sollors writes, \"William Dean Howells did not overstate his case when he compared Chesnutt's works with those by Turgenev, Maupassant, and James.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJudith Jackson Fossett, associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, is the author of \u003cb\u003eIlluminated Darkness: Slavery and Its Shadows in Nineteenth-Century America\u003c\/b\u003e and the editor of \u003cb\u003eRace Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House LLC (No Starch)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51998219272466,"sku":"9780812966169","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_592a337a-b094-4929-9e46-19456b81c650.jpg?v=1770144586","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-house-behind-the-cedars-9780812966169","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}