The Confessions of Nat Turner | Suggested Reading

The Confessions of Nat Turner Related Titles

The collection of critical essays Ten Black Writers Respond (1968) is invaluable in a consideration of the rage and outrage that greeted Styron's novel from black critics in the 1960s. The fiery rhetoric of the essays often undercuts the critical positions of them, but a systematic review of many of the most substantial charges — the role of Turner's wife, the nature of the revolt and of the heroic leader in charge of it, the elimination of any positive black values from Turner's family, the attitudes toward both the system itself and the individual slaves within it — helps to generate many interesting approaches, however doubtful, to the novel.