Friday from the Archives: “Orphans and Outcasts: The Novels of Angela Davis-Gardner” by Fred Chappell in NCLR 2018
NCLR joins with the rest of North Carolina in mourning the passing of Angela Davis-Gardner earlier in August. Davis-Gardner was a native North Carolinian who taught Creative Writing at NC State (and other schools) for many years.
In 2018, Fred Chappell wrote an essay for us about Davis-Gardner’s four novels and the “themes that pulse within…. Beryl and Stevie, like Felice and Monsieur, Barbara Jefferson and Seiji Okada, and the tenacious Benji, are strangers in worlds they never made, born or thrust into dilemmas that threaten their identities and sometimes their lives.”
It is intriguing as to why authors write the stories they write. Chappell delves into the Orphan-ness of these characters, “But as novels, their stories are not forbidding; these enjoyable books are not didactic existentialist treatises. The author’s scenes are sharply observed and carefully designed. The characters in their struggles are vivid and engaging. The pages bear their stores of import gracefully, and every passage is informed by a sense of the whole.”
Read all of Chappell’s essay on ProQuest and her obituary. Add the 2018 issue to your collection today!
