Grace Lumpkin - Works

Works

• To Make My Bread (1932). Tells the story of a family of Appalachian mountaineers who find themselves drawn to a mill town near their family plot after suffering great economic adversity. Soon, all the characters become involved in the politics surrounding the exploitation of labor workers. Lumpkin based her work on the Gastonia textile strike of 1929 at Loray Mill, one of the most important labor strikes in United States history. Also considered an examination of cultural and feminist history during the Depression, Lumpkin’s novel addresses many of the stratifications between class and race. The novel won the Gorky Prize in 1933.

• A Sign for Cain (1935). The novel follows an African-American protagonist, Dennis, who dreams of organizing workers of all skin colors in order to stand together against business owners and others who wish to control them, regardless of race. A Sign for Cain focuses on the struggle between newly freed blacks and their old owners. Issues with sharecropping and land ownership impact both races represented and talk of a social uprising has tones of communist revolution, a theme then emerging more prevalently in Lumpkin’s own life. Lumpkin realized the influence the Communist Party had over her writing, and even claimed that the strong implications evident in her text were driven by her mentors in the party. Maxim Lieber served as her literary agent in 1935.

• The Wedding (1939). The storyline follows the marriage ceremony of Jennie Middleton, the daughter of an aristocratic family that has ended up in ruin. The novel is set in 1909 and the families involved live strictly by the code of the Confederacy. Jennie’s groom is Dr. Gregg, a new member of the community, having moved to town due to its rising industrialization. The wedding is almost put on hold after a heated argument and it is only after her mother, father, and Gregg’s friend act as peacemakers that it continues. Jennie conforms to society’s demands, having stood her ground for the last time against a marriage in which she has little emotional relation with the doctor.

• Full Circle (1962). Lumpkin’s final novel explores her changing ideas regarding communism. She uses the case of the Scottsboro Boys, and the characters involved, as an expose of the "evils of Communism". The main character, Arnie Braxton, and her mother are slowly tempted into the world of Communist Party politics. Soon the two women find themselves rejecting bourgeois illusions, allowing the sacrilege of a Christ figurine and deserting the rest of their family. Eventually, Arnie is ejected from the Communist Party for racial prejudice. Throughout the text, Lumpkin describes the Communist Party in stark terms and addresses her novel towards Southern issues.