Grace Lumpkin - Influence

Influence

Lumpkin provides modern readers with a window into the past of the building of the southern working class and the changes to its patriarchal values and women’s roles. Lumpkin’s writings give cultural historians and scholars an important body to consider when considering this period and the movements to which she contributed.

Beginning in the 1950s, scholars regained interest in radical "lost novels" of the 1930s. They have pointed to Lumpkin as one of the period's most influential authors. They have noted both her historical and literary accomplishments, particularly prominent as a figure in the early feminist movement and for promoting worker’s rights. She has received praise for her ability to portray the process in which "external forces shape a literary work". she was only 22 when she made her first novel. Recent literary scholarship has noted Lumpkin’s ideals of progressive representations of race relations and how she incorporated these into her writings. For example, the characters in To Make My Bread illustrate the importance of alliances between white and black women workers, and how these can be based on mutual understanding and need. Lumpkin shows readers that solidarity across racial and economic lines is essential for members of all groups.

Historians during the 1960s and 1970s found particular interest in whether the United States run according to competitive individualism or by cooperation and mutuality. They looked to Lumpkin’s literature to study this argument.