Birthright: A NovelThe protagonist of this novel is an educated mulatto male who tries to survive in a small Southern town in the early twentieth century. In a biography of Stribling, William E. Smith states: "Many years after its publication, Stribling identified his work as 'the first realistic novel of Negroes written in this country since Opie Read produced My Young Master.'" In 1924, the famous black director Oscar Micheaux adapted Birthright into a silent film. |
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Common terms and phrases
ain't Arkwright asked began Big Hill breath brown cabin Captain Renfrew caught cedar glade chair Cissie Dildine Cissie's colored constable crescent dark deed Dillihay place door dust eyes face feeling felt gate Gawd girl glade goin gwine hand head heah Henry Hooker Hooker's Bend jail Jallup Jim Crow Jim Pink Jonesboro Killibrew lamp laugh lips looked at Peter man's marry mind moral mother moved mulatto negro never nigger Niggertown night nodded octoroon old Captain old gentleman old negress old Rose Parson Ranson paused Persimmon Peter knew Peter looked Peter Siner Peter stood Peter walked piazza queer race roustabout seemed smile South stared street sumac talking thing thought Throgmartin Tomwit Tump Pack Tump's turned village voice whole whut window woman wondered Yeah
Popular passages
Page 227 - I want you to help me get this royal rooster ready for battle. This is our chance to clean up. OK" Getting the King ready for combat was no problem. Particularly because Kiko had decided against the usual prerequisites for gamefowls. My brother did not bother to stub its spurs. Nor did he trim its feathers or divest it...
Page 220 - Scarcely a department of Southern life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting, novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition is careful. Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation...
Page 309 - Any people with an abounding vitality will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun. Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor are all races bound for the same port. Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
Page 221 - ... equality ; it was a question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the Negro inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the white, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only riveted heavier shackles on their limbs...
Page 234 - ... Negro inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the white, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only riveted heavier shackles on their limbs." Finally, "the white South must humanize the black not for the sake of the Negro but for the sake of itself.
Page 220 - All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting, novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition is careful. Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a cause to defend....
Page 228 - Where do you want to go, Cissie?" The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly. "I don't know ; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about.
Page 8 - Peter recalled their names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill. Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the...
Page 27 - About once a year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white soda-water dispensers, on the other side of the hill, to sterilize their glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
Page 277 - Tightness of the woman's choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love. And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social force may count. That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw...