"In this reassessment of the American South and its literature, Richard Gray explores the idea of regionalism by focusing on those writers whose relationship with the South has been particularly problematical. Asking just what it means to belong to a place, a region - and, more specifically, what it implies for certain Americans to call themselves Southerners - he analyzes conflicting notions of the South that have evolved over the past two centuries. In the process, Gray offers a new reading of many Southern writers and of the whole notion of a Southern tradition."--BOOK JACKET.