Several characters in Light in August appear in other Yoknapatawpha novels and short stories. Joanna Burden's relatives appear briefly in The Unvanquished, where they are shot by John Sartoris, and many characters Lena encounters on her journey to Jefferson appear in The Hamlet and other Snopes short stories and novels. Gavin Stevens appears in the Snopes trilogy, Knight's Gambit and Intruder in the Dust, as well as a number of short stories, although usually in a more sympathetic role.

Faulkner treats racial bias in several novels, but especially in Go Down, Moses; Absalom, Absalom!; and Intruder in the Dust.

A collection of linked short stories that compose a novel, Go Down, Moses focuses on the McCaslin family from the pre-Civil War era to shortly before World War II. Ike McCaslin, who becomes aware that his ancestors not only owned slaves but enslaved their own children begotten...