Voices for Truth: Escapism or Activism?

Join an intimate discussion of literature in one of Cincinnati's most iconic literary destinations--the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. Carry forward its legacy of social change and be part of its future.

Gothic authors have often used what can be an escapist genre for insightful social criticism. Get into the Halloween spirit by listening to the voices for truth in short stories by three very different authors of American Gothic tales.

Suggested readings:

• William Faulkner, “Pantaloon in Black” (1940)
• Ralph Ellison, “King of the Bingo Game” (1944)
• Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Wife’s Story” (1982)

About the Facilitators:

• Dr. John Getz is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Xavier University and has been volunteering for the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House for many years.
• Dr. Kristen Renzi is Professor of English at Xavier University.

We’ll study the writings of many authors from the 19th and 20th centuries to determine

• how they discovered their voices,
• the forms they chose for expressing their voices,
• the needs both personal and societal to which they put those expressions,
• the effects their work had,
• how we can develop and enlist our own voices in service of our own values.

Harriet Beecher Stowe is our exemplar voice for truth. During her eighteen years in Cincinnati as a young adult (1832-1850), she discovered her voice as a writer, and in 1851, she decided to devote it to the anti-slavery cause. Horrified by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she wrote to editor Gamaliel Bailey: "Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject [slavery], and I dreaded to expose even my own mind to the full force of its exciting power. But now I feel that the time has come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak."The result, of course, was Uncle Tom's Cabin, the blockbuster novel that awakened many Northerners to the horrors of slavery and helped create the change of heart that would allow the Union to stand firm when the South ceded over slavery.

Host or Publisher Harriet Beecher Stowe House