Alabama literature includes the prose fiction, poetry, films and biographies that are set in or created by those from the US state of Alabama. This literature officially began emerging from the state circa 1819 with the recognition of the region as a state. Like other forms of literature from the Southern United States, Alabama literature often discusses issues of race, stemming from the history of the slave society, the American Civil War, the Reconstruction era and Jim Crow laws, and the US Civil Rights Movement. Alabama literature was inspired by the latter's significant campaigns and events in the state, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Selma to Montgomery marches.
Some of the most notable pieces of literature from this region include Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Winston Groom's novel Forrest Gump, and Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe. The biographies of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are also highly significant.
Early accounts (1539-1819)
Early literary works composed in modern-day Alabama were printed elsewhere. For example, members of Hernando de Soto's expedition into the then unknown territory of what is now the Southeastern United States wrote accounts chronicling battles against local chief Tuskaloosa in central Alabama. Written accounts from an unnamed Portuguese author, de Soto's secretary Rodrigo Rangel, and the King's agent Luis Hernandez de Biedma were published in Évora (1557), Madrid (1851), and London (1857) respectively. Because of the detailed journals kept by French colonial carpenter André Pénigaut, which were posthumously published by French historian in 1883, scholars have called Pénigaut "Alabama's first literary figure". When annexation by the United States appeared imminent, two American publishers, John Hood and Samuel Miller, established Alabama's first newspaper at Fort Stoddert. On May 23, 1811, they began printing The Mobile Centinel. The Madison Gazette began printing in Huntsville, Alabama, one year later. The first standalone work of literature written and published in Alabama was Lewis Sewall's poem, The Last Campaign of Sir John Falstaff the II; or, The Hero of the Burnt-Corn Battle: a Heroi-Comic Poem, a satirical account of the Battle of Burnt Corn.
Statehood and Antebellum period (1819-1861) From the recognition of Alabama as a state in 1819 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, regional literature in this era contained strong themes of nationalism and discussions of race centered around slavery and the political unrest in the lead-up to the Civil War. Notable works from this period include a history of the state by Albert J Pickett, epic poetry and essays by Alexander Beaufort Meek, including one about the Creek leader Red Eagle; humorist stories of the pioneer era by Johnson J Hooper, and Caroline Lee Hentz.
Modern (late 19th to mid 20th century) Displaying the conventions of Modernism found in literature throughout the Western world, literature in Alabama was also characterized by themes expressed in the South and other parts of the United States. These included issues of race, in response to disfranchisement of most blacks at the turn of the century, passage of Jim Crow laws in the late 19th century to mid-20th century, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Authors also addressed issues of gender and war, in response to the First and Second World Wars, and the Vietnam War.
Fiction
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is widely recognized as the most influential fictional work from Alabama. It continues to be one of the most popular novels in the English language, and has been widely translated. The novel follows the young Scout Finch, a girl being raised with her brother by their widowed father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer in a small town. The children are often treated as outsiders, leading to them to bond with others on the margin, such as neighbor Boo Radley. The central conflict of the novel is when Atticus defends a black man accused of rape of a white woman.
Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1926. She was likely influenced by the larger events of this period, but critics believe that material from three specific cases from her youth can be seen in her work. Firstly, the Scottsboro Boys case of 1931 to 1937 in northern Alabama involved eight young black men unjustly accused of rape of a white woman, a 1933 criminal case in Monroeville with significant parallels to the case described in To Kill A Mockingbird, and the confrontation between her father, Amasa Coleman Lee (believed to have inspired the character Atticus), and members of the Ku Klux Klan outside their house in 1934. To Kill a Mockingbird spent 98 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and in 1961, Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. A film adaptation of the same name premiered in 1962 and won three Academy Awards. Go Set a Watchman, a second novel that cast a different perspective on these events, was published in 2015; Lee had had many issues with her health.
Christopher Paul Curtis wrote a young adult novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham (1963). It tells the story of young Kenny and his family traveling to Alabama during a critical year of the Civil Rights Movement. The novel won an array of awards, including the Newberry Honour Book Award and the Coretta Scott King Honour Book Award for African American Writers.
The Keepers of the House (1964), by Shirley Ann Grau, is a novel about Abigail Howland, the head of a family who is ostracized when it is revealed that her grandfather lived for 30 years with a Black mistress and raised three mixed-race children with her. In response to Grau's writings on interracial marriage, members of the Ku Klux Klan attempted to intimidate her by burning a cross in front of her house. The Keepers of the House won a Pulitzer Prize in 1965.
Joe David Brown's novels were well known for drawing on his life, including his childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, experience as a journalist, and service in World War II. His most famous work is the novel, Addie Pray (1971), which follows 11-year-old Addie and Long Boy, the man who might be her father. They travel as two con artists in the South. The novel was adapted as the film Paper Moon, and Tatum O'Neal as Addie became the youngest person ever to win an Academy Award. His novel, Stars in My Crown (1947), was adapted into a film of the same name in 1949. Brown based it on his grandfather. Brown also published The Freeholder in 1949, Kings Go Forth in 1956, and Glimpse of a Stranger in 1968.
South To A Very Old Place (1971), was written by Albert Murray, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama. South To A Very Old Place follows the personal pilgrimage of a Black intellectual man and contains highly political discussions of race and its relationship with the United States.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Robert R. McCammon is best known for his horror novels and collection of short stories, published between 1978 and 1990. These include Baal, Bethany's Sin, the Night Boat, They Thirst, Mystery Walk, Usher's Passing, Swan Song, Stinger, The Wolf's Hour, Blue World, and Mine. McCammon also published a Boy's Life, a "sentimental novel in which the good end up happy and the bad unhappy in the young protagonist's fictional Alabama hometown".
Forrest Gump (1986) is a novel by Winston Groom. He wrote other novels, including Shrouds of Glory and Patriotic Fire, and several non-fiction works, including biographies of multiple persons in one volume. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction work, Conversations with the Enemy. Groom grew up in Mobile, attended the University of Alabama, and served as a second lieutenant in Vietnam in 1965.
Forrest Gump was adapted for film, with a screenplay written by Eric Roth; it was released in 1994 starring Tom Hanks. It grossed more than $670 million globally at the box office and won six Oscars, in addition to numerous other awards. In both forms, the story follows Forrest Gump, an optimistic Alabama man with a below average IQ, throughout his life. He is involved in many significant events in US history, including the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis.
Biography
The blind and deaf Helen Keller's inspirational story is told in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, published in 1903. Recounting her early life in Alabama, the autobiography features some of the most prominent figures in her life, including learning to communicate with Anne Sullivan.
Published in 1998, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr, recounts the life of one of the most notable figures in the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr, including his childhood in segregated Alabama. He describes his faith, family, and views on other notable figures of the time, including presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and other civil rights activists, such as Malcolm X.
In her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story (1999), written with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks tells of being an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She became known for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated city bus in Montgomery in 1955 and sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a major campaign in the Movement. Parks also discusses her years afterward as a civil rights activist as well.
Contemporary (mid 20th century to present day)
Fiction Mary Ward Brown, recognized as "one of contemporary Southern fiction's most important writers", is known for her short story collections, Tongues of Flame and It Wasn't All Dancing, that discuss issues of race, class, gender and age. Tongues of Flame, the 1986 collection that includes Good-Bye, Cliff, Let Him Live, Disturber of the Peace, and Fruit of the Season, was awarded the Pen/ Hemingway Award, the Lillian Smith Award, and the Alabama Library Association Award. Following the publication of It Wasn't All Dancing, Brown also won the Harper Lee Award and the Hillsdale Award for Fiction.
Fannie Flagg's much beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe was published in 1987. Set in the 1930s, the novel discusses themes of friendship and loyalty through the account of the friendship between the lonely Cleo Threadgoode and the neurotic and fearful Evelyn Couch. The film adaptation, Fried Green Tomatoes, was released in 1991, the script for which Flagg won the Scripters Award and was nominated for an Academy Award and the Writers Guild of America award. Flagg also authored Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! and A Redbird Christmas.
Anne George's 1996 novel, Murder On A Girls Night Out, is about a schoolteacher from Alabama, her sister, and the murder investigation that they get drawn into, which is characterized by humorous details.
Birmingham native Daniel Wallace is best known for his 1998 novel Big Fish. Wallace was born and raised in Birmingham, and his novels have frequently used Alabama and the South as settings, combining Southern themes with mythology and magical realism. In 2019, he received the Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer.
Set in Birmingham in 1963, Sena Jeter Naslund's 2001 novel, Four Spirits, centers around Stella, a white middle-class young woman who is haunted by the deaths of her family when she was a child. She is overwhelmed by the racially inspired violence in Birmingham, of whites against blacks, including the bombing of a church that year that results in the deaths of four African-American girls. She and a friend become involved in civil rights by working for a night school and teaching black students.