SOURCE: A review of We Are the living, in The New York Times Book Review, October 1, 1933, p. 6.

In the review below, Strauss praises the authenticity of the pieces in We Are the living, declaring that "Caldwell's stories are as indigenous to the American soil as a corncob pipe or a Ford car. "

We have come to think, through the blithe dichotomy of some old Greek, of tragedy and comedy as two absolute moods. The reviewers of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road called it a novel of terse tragic power; and these same gentry hailed its very similar successor, God's little Acre, as the work of a leading American humorist. We now have the advantage of glimpsing, however briefly, the varied aspects of Caldwell's genius. It is only in this volume of short stories [We Are the living] that we see that his work is not to be labeled comedy...