{"id":2127,"date":"2020-02-11T17:03:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T22:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=2127"},"modified":"2020-02-14T10:16:56","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:16:56","slug":"storied-charlotte-celebrating-the-stories-and-storytellers-of-charlotte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2020\/02\/11\/storied-charlotte-celebrating-the-stories-and-storytellers-of-charlotte\/","title":{"rendered":"Storied Charlotte: Celebrating the Stories and Storytellers of Charlotte"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Charlotte, Carson McCullers, and Harry Golden<\/strong> —\nWelcome to the inaugural post of Storied Charlotte, my new blog about the\nstories and storytellers of Charlotte. \nStoried Charlotte is an outgrowth of my Monday Missive, a blog I wrote\nduring the seven and a half years that I served as the chair of UNC Charlotte\u2019s\nDepartment of English.  When I stepped\ndown as chair in December 2019, I drew the curtain on my Monday Missive.  Since then, numerous people have told me that\nthey miss reading my Monday Missive, and they asked me to consider starting a\nnew blog.  Their requests prompted me to\nlaunch Storied Charlotte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often promoted literary events in Charlotte in my Monday\nMissive, but I usually focused on the people and events associated with the\nEnglish Department.  In Storied\nCharlotte, my focus will be on Charlotte\u2019s vibrant literary community.  As a long-time member of UNC Charlotte\u2019s\nEnglish Department, I have a deep interest in Charlotte\u2019s evolving literary\ncommunity.  This community includes more\nthan writers. It also encompasses librarians, booksellers, publishers, literacy\nactivists, and (most importantly) readers. \nMy hope is that Storied Charlotte will be of interest to everyone who\nhas connections to Charlotte\u2019s literary community or who is curious about how\nCharlotte became such a storied city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reflecting on the history of Charlotte\u2019s literary community,\nI think that there are two writers who played particularly important roles in\nestablishing Charlotte as a place that attracts and inspires important\nwriters.  One is Carson McCullers, and the\nother is Harry Golden.  Neither of these\nwriters grew up in Charlotte, but both of them began their careers as writers\nwhile living in Charlotte. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Gavin West<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Photo by Gavin West<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

McCullers moved to Charlotte from Columbus, Georgia, in 1937\nwhen she was just twenty years old.  She\nand her husband moved into a boarding house on East Boulevard, and it was here\nthat she began her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.  <\/em>A few months later, they moved to a house\non Central Avenue where she continued to work on her novel. They left Charlotte\nin the spring of 1938 and moved to Fayetteville, and she finished The Heart\nIs a Lonely Hunter<\/em> while living there. \nThe book came out in 1940 to great acclaim and immediately established\nMcCullers as an up-and-coming writer. \nMcCullers spent much of the rest of her life in New York, but she continued\nto write about the American South in her fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During her time in Charlotte, McCullers generally wrote in\nthe morning and then took long walks in the afternoon.  She drew on the observations she made during\nthese walks in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter<\/em>.  She did not identify Charlotte as the setting\nfor this novel, but she incorporated details from Charlotte in her descriptions\nof the unnamed mill town where the characters live.  She also included in her novel reflections on\nthe racism and sexism that she witnessed during her time in Charlotte.  Given that she wrote the book in the late\n1930s, her sensitive treatment of these issues can be seen as prophetic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after McCullers published The Heart Is a Lonely\nHunter <\/em>and moved to New York, a New Yorker named Harry Golden moved to\nCharlotte.  Golden spent most of his\nboyhood and young adult days in New York City before settling permanently in\nCharlotte in 1941.  The next year he\npublished a trial run of the Carolina Israelite, <\/em>a newspaper intended\nprimarily for North Carolina\u2019s Jewish community.  It was a success, and in 1944 he began\npublishing the newspaper on a regular basis. \nHe continued to publish this paper until 1968. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In addition to publishing his newspaper, Golden wrote\nnumerous best-selling books, including Only in America <\/em>(1958),<\/em> For\n2\u00a2 Plain <\/em>(1958), and Enjoy, Enjoy! <\/em>(1960).   Although these books became known for their\nfolksy humor, they had a serious side to them, too.  In many of his publications and public\nappearances, Golden spoke out against racial segregation and called for an end\nto the Jim Crow laws.   At the time of\nhis death in 1981, Golden was Charlotte\u2019s most famous writer.  Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett provides a thorough\ndiscussion of Golden\u2019s career as a writer in Carolina Israelite:  How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the\nSouth, and Civil Rights. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Gavin West<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Photo by Gavin West<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Both McCullers and Golden have left their marks on the\nstreets of Charlotte.  The former\nboarding house on 311 East Boulevard where McCullers started her writing career\nstill stands.  It is now the location of\nthe Copper Restaurant, and in front of the restaurant there is a historical\nmarker commemorating McCullers\u2019s association with the building.  The final home where Harry Golden lived is\nalso still standing and is still used as a private residence.  It\u2019s a bungalow at the corner of Hawthorne\nLane and E. 8th<\/sup> Street, right across from Hawthorne Lane Methodist\nChurch.   There is a historical\nmarker near that house indicting that Golden lived in this building.  The marker is located at the corner of 7th<\/sup>\nStreet and Hawthorne Lane.  Also, the\nAtkins Library at UNC Charlotte has a permanent display covering Golden\u2019s life\nand writings.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCullers and Golden found inspiration in Charlotte.  Neither saw Charlotte as a perfect place, and\nboth were attuned to the prejudice that was commonplace in Charlotte in the\nmid-twentieth century. Still, for both of them, Charlotte proved to be a\nfertile place where they could pursue their careers as writers.   As the years have gone by, many writers have\nfollowed in their footsteps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte, Carson McCullers, and Harry Golden — Welcome to the inaugural post of Storied Charlotte, my new blog about the stories and storytellers of Charlotte.  Storied Charlotte is an outgrowth of my Monday Missive, a blog I wrote during the seven and a half years that I served as the chair of UNC Charlotte\u2019s Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[12,9,14,8,11,10,13,6,7],"class_list":["post-2127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-books","tag-carson-mccullers","tag-charlotte","tag-harry-golden","tag-librarians","tag-literary","tag-literature","tag-stories","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2127"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}